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THE HOOSIERS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

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TORONTO 



THE HOOSIERS 



BY 

MEREDITH NICHOLSON 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
I915 

All rights reserved 



rs.''. '- 



1 



Copyright, 1900, 1915, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. New edition published August, 1915. 



Noiboooti ^rres 

J. S. Cuahing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

AUG 'db Idib 

©CI.A410^30 
3Co / 



Eq tfje Pernors ai 
CALEB MILLS 

SOMETIME PROFESSOR IN WABASH COLLEGE 

THE FRUITS OF WHOSE ENLIGHTENMENT, FORESIGHT 

AND COURAGE 

ARE AN ENDURING HERITAGE 

TO THE PEOPLE OF INDIANA 



PREFACE 

These pages represent an effort to give some 
hint of the forces that have made for cultiva- 
tion in Indiana. While the immediate purpose 
has been an examination of the State's per- 
formance in literature, it has seemed proper 
to approach the subject with a slight review 
of Indiana's political and social history. Owing 
to limitations of space, much is suggested merely 
which it would be profitable to discuss at length. 
It is hoped that such matters as racial influ- 
ences, folk-speech, etc., which are but lightly 
touched here, may appeal to others who will 
make them the subject of more searching in- 
quiry. Only names that have seemed most sig- 
nificant are included; many creditable writers 
are necessarily omitted. 

I take pleasure in acknowledging my indebt- 
edness to Dr. Edward Eggleston, Miss Anna 
Nicholas, and Mr. Merrill Moores for their 



viii PREFACE 

courteous responses to many requests for in- 
formation. Miss May Louise Shipp gave me 
access to papers relating to her kinswoman, 
Mrs. Dumont, which I could not have seen 
but for her kindness. Miss Eliza G. Browning, 
the Public Librarian of Indianapolis, Mr. H. S. 
Wedding, the Librarian of Wabash College, 
and Mr. Charles R. Dudley, of the Denver 
Library, were most generous and indulgent on 
my behalf. 

M. N. 
Denver, July, 1900. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Indiana and her People i 



CHAPTER II 

The Rural Type and the Dialect 

The Word " Hoosier " 29 

Pioneer Difficulties 36 

The Dialect 45 

CHAPTER III 

Bringers of the Light 

Religious Influences 63 

Early Illiteracy 70 

Caleb Mills 79 

Julia L. Dumont and Catharine Merrill . . . .89 

CHAPTER IV 

An Experiment in Socialism 

New Hamiony . 98 

Robert Dale Owen and William Maclure . . . .101 
Thomas Say and the Scientists ...... 104 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER V 
The Hoosier Interpreted 

VAGK 

Edward Eggleston 134 

Jajmes Whitcomb Riley I eg 

CHAPTER VI 

Crawfordsvillz 

*• The Hoosier Athens " 177 

Lew Wallace 180 

Maurice Thompson 199 

Mary H. Krout and Caroline V. Krout .... 212 

CHAPTER VII 

*'0f making Many Books there is no End" 

Indiana a Point of Departure 214 

Fiction 217 

History and Politics 226 

Miscellaneous 237 

CHAPTER VIII 
An Indiana Choir 

Early Writers 244 

Forceythe Willson and Elizabeth Conwell Willson . . 256 

Later Poets 265 

The Hoosier Landscape 269 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER IX 
A Centennial Postscript 

PAGE 

Changes of Fifteen Years 272 

The Persistent Literary Industry 280 

One Hundredth Birthday 289 



Index 



291 



THE HOOSIERS 



CHAPTER I 

INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 

The rise of Indiana as an enlightened 
commonwealth has been accompanied by phe- 
nomena of unusual interest and variety, and 
whatever contributions the State may make to 
the total of national achievement in any de- 
partment of endeavor are to be appraised in 
the light of her history and development. The 
origin of the beginners of the State, the influ- 
ences that wrought upon them, the embarrass- 
ments that have attended the later generations 
in their labors, become matters of moment in 
any inquiry that is directed to their intellectual 
history. It is not of so great importance that a 
few individuals within a State shall, from time 
to time, show talent or genius, as that the gen- 
eral level of cultivation in the community shall 
be continually raised. Where, as in Indiana, the 
appearance of artistic talent follows naturally an 
intellectual development that uplifts the whoie, 



2 THE HOOSIERS 

the condition presented is at once interesting 
and admirable. Owing to a misapprehension 
of the State's social history, an exaggerated 
importance has been given to the manifesta- 
tions of creative talent perceptible in Indiana, 
the assumption being in many quarters that the 
Hoosier Commonwealth is in some way set 
apart from her neighbors by reason of the 
uncouthness and ignorance of the inhabitants ; 
and the word " Hoosier " has perhaps been un- 
fortunate as applied to Indianians in that it has 
sometimes been taken as a synonym for boor- 
ishness and illiteracy. The Indiana husband- 
men, even in the pioneer period, differed little 
or not at all from the settlers in other terri- 
torial divisions of the West and Southwest ; and 
the early Indiana town folk were the peers of 
any of their fellows of the urban class in the 
Ohio Valley. 

The Indianians came primarily of American 
.itock, and they have been influenced much less 
than the majority of their neighbors in other 
states by the currents of alien migration that 
have flowed around and beyond them. The 
frontiersmen, who carried the rifle and the axe 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 3 

to make way for the plough, were brave, hardy, 
and intelligent; and those who accompanied 
them and became builders of cities and framers 
and interpreters of law, were their kinsmen, and 
possessed the natural qualities and the cultiva- 
tion that would have made them conspicuous 
anywhere. The Indianians remained in a strik- 
ing degree the iixed population of the territory 
that fell to them. They were sustained and 
lifted by religion through all their formative 
years, and when aroused to the importance of 
education were quick to insure intelligence in 
their posterity. The artistic impulse appeared 
naturally in later generations. The value of the 
literature produced in the State may be debat- 
able, but there is no just occasion for surprise 
that attention to literary expression has been so 
general. 

Indiana has always lain near the currents of 
national life, and her beginnings were joined 
to the larger fortunes of the national destiny. 
Three flags have been emblems of government 
in her territory, and wars whose principal inci- 
dents occurred far from the western wilderness 
played an important part in her history. Early 



4 THE HOOSIERS 

in the eighteenth century the French settled 
on the Wabash, which was an essential link in 
the chain of communication between the settle- 
ments of the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes 
and those of the Lower Mississippi; and the 
coureurs des bois, as they guided their frail 
navies up and down the stream, or sang their 
chansons de voyage as they lay in lonely camps, 
gave the first color of romance to the Hoosier 
country. The treaty signed at Paris, February 
lo, 1763, ended French dominion and brought 
British rule. The American Revolution made 
itself felt on the Wabash when, in 1 779, George 
Rogers Clark effected the capture of Fort Vin- 
cennes from a British commander. The first 
territorial governor of Indiana became the ninth 
president of the United States after the rollick- 
ing hard cider campaign of "Tippecanoe and 
Tyler too " ; and when, years afterward, Ben- 
jamin Harrison, his grandson, was elected 
twenty-third president, the bonds between State 
and Nation were close and strong. Indi- 
ana valiantly defended herself against the 
Indians in the War of 1812 ; she sent five regi- 
ments to the Mexican War, equipped 208,300 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 5 

volunteers for the war of the rebellion, and 
7300 for the war with Spain. Slavery was an 
issue on Indiana soil long before the North- 
west Territory had been divided. At a conven- 
tion held at Vincennes in 1802, a year and a 
half after the organization of Indiana Territory, 
a memorial was sent to the National Congress 
asking that the antislavery proviso in the ordi- 
nance of 1787 be repealed, and slavery was 
thereafter a potent influence in territorial poli- 
tics until the admission of Indiana, as a free 
state, in 1816.^ 

The victories of George Rogers Clark were 
not only of great importance in determining 
the future political relations of the Northwest 
Territory, but they defined the character of the 
population that should dominate in the region 
he conquered. The Ohio was the highway that 
led into the new world, and the first comers to 
Indiana in the years immediately following the 
Revolution were mainly drawn either directly 
from Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, or Virginia, or 
were of that fascinating band of hunters and 
frontiersmen of similar origin, who had only 

1 Dunn's " Indiana," p. 302 et seq. 



6 THE HOOSIERS 

a few years earlier begun the redemption of 
Tennessee and Kentucky from savagery. Ken- 
tucky was a temporary resting-place for many 
who later drifted West and Northwest; and 
their descendants, markedly of Scotch-Irish 
origin, are still clearly defined in Indiana. 
Philadelphia and Charleston were the two 
ports to which these Presbyterian Irish came 
in greatest numbers in the early years of 
the eighteenth century. They at once left the 
seaboard settlements and spread along the 
Alleghanies, the Pennsylvanians moving south- 
ward until they met their Carolina brethren, 
when the united stream swept with fresh 
strength boldly into the Ohio Valley. Emigra- 
tion from the north of Ireland "waxed and 
waned," says Dr. Eggleston,^ "as the great Irish 
linen industry of the last century declined or 
prospered." Some of these people were steady 
and thrifty ; others were reckless and adven- 
turous. The frontier life afforded an outlet for 
their wild spirits, and Indian wars and the hunting 
of big game were their congenial employments. 
The Germans, also derived from Pennsylvania 

1 Preface to " The Hoosier Schoolmaster," Library Edition. 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 7 

and the Carolinas, joined the westward stream ; 
the English, the Dutch, and the Swiss added to 
it in varying degree, but the North-Irish element, 
dating from the earliest settlement, was long 
potent in politics, society, and religion, and be- 
came a most important factor in Indiana history. 
Northern Indiana was settled much more 
slowly than the southern half of the State, 
owing primarily to the fierce resistance of the 
Miami Confederacy, which barred ingress by 
way of the lakes, rivers, and portages, and 
defeated successive armies that were sent 
against it. When the way was opened, the 
Middle States and New England slowly con- 
tributed to the population. Many of these 
immigrants paused first in the Western Reserve 
of Ohio, and a smaller proportion in Michigan. 
It is a question for the scientists whether the 
differences still observable between the people 
of the northern prairie region in Indiana and 
those of the woodland areas — differences of 
thrift, energy, and initiative ^ — are not due as 
much to natural conditions as to racial influ- 
ences ; and they may also have an explanation 

1 McCuUoch's " Men and Measures," p. 78. 



S THE HOOSIERS 

of the fact that Indiana's literary activity has 
been observed principally in the southern half 
of the State, below a line drawn through Craw- 
fordsville. The seniority of the southern settle- 
ments is not a wholly satisfactory solution, and 
the difference in antecedents invites speculation. 
It happened fortunately that the worst ele- 
ment contributed to the population of Indiana 
and Illinois in early years — known as "poor 
whites" — was the least permanent. Dr. 
Eggleston describes them as "a semi-nomadic 
people, descendants of the colonial bond- 
servants," ^ who moved on in large numbers to 
Missouri so early as 1845, ^^^ thence from the 
famous Pike County scattered widely, appearing 
finally in California, where Bret Harte took note 
of them. Professor Fiske in his account of the 
dispersion of these people ^ does not mention 
Indiana as one of their outlets, and the State's 
proportion was unquestionably small. Romance 
has not attached to them where they linger in 
Southern Indiana, although they are of the same 
strain as their kindred at the south who have 

1 Preface to "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," Library Edition. 

2 " Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," II, 320. 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 9 

SO often delighted the readers of fiction. By way 
of illustration it may be said that in the hills 
of Brown County the traveller passes here and 
there a rude wagon drawn by oxen. A dusty 
native walks beside the team, and seated on the 
floor of the wagon is an old grandmother, 
smoking a clay pipe with great contentment. 
The same picture may be met with in the Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee mountains, but with the 
difference that in those regions the story-tellers 
have woven the spell of romance about the hill 
folk, whereas in Indiana similar characters are 
looked upon as ugly and uninteresting.^ 

The rural and urban classes produced a first 
generation that realized a type drawing strength 
from both farm and town and destined to steady 
improvement throughout the century. New- 
people poured in from the Eastern States and 
from Europe ; but in no old community of the 
seaboard has loftier dignity been conferred by 
long residence or pioneer ancestry than in 
Indiana. This pride was brought in more par- 
ticularly from the Southeast, and there are still 
communities in which the stranger will be sensi- 
ble of it. The native Americans of Indiana have 

1 Marked improvement followed the building of a railroad 
across the county. The lovely hills are dotted with the villas 
of summer residents and many artists go there to paint. 



10 THE HOOSIERS 

continued the dominant element to a greater 
extent than in most Northern States, 74 per 
cent of the total population in 1890 consisting 
of natives; 20 per cent of natives of other 
States ; while the foreign-born population com- 
prised only 6 per cent of the total.^ In the 
larger cities, as Indianapolis, Evansville, and 
Fort Wayne, the Germans had an important 
part from the beginning, and the Irish were 
well distributed ; but before the Scandinavians 
and Slavs had begun to seek homes in America, 
the land values in Indiana had so appreciated 
that this class of immigrants could find no foot- 
ing. The centre of population in the United 
States, which lay just east of Baltimore in the 
first decade of the century, moved gradually 
westward, until, in the last decade, it lay in 
Indiana at a point sixty-five miles south of 
Indianapolis. 

The older Indiana towns enjoyed in their 
beginnings all the benefits that may be bestowed 
upon new communities by a people of good social 
antecedents. Many of these towns have lost 
their prestige, owing to changed political or com- 

1 Statistical Atlas, U. S. Census, 1890, p. 24. 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE II 

mercial conditions ; the departed glory of some 
of them is only a tradition among the elders ; 
but the charm of many remains. Indiana, as 
Territory and State, has had three political capi- 
tals, Vincennes and Cory don having enjoyed 
the distinction before IndianapoHs finally at- 
tained it. Vincennes, however, refused to fall 
with her political dethronement, but built upon 
her memories, and became "no mean city." In 
1847 the railway connecting Madison with 
Indianapolis was completed. Madison was thus 
made the gateway of the State, and one of the 
most important shipping points on the Ohio, with 
daily steam packet to Cincinnati and Louisville ; 
but this prosperity was only temporary, for east 
and west lines of railway soon drew the traffic 
away from the river. Madison retains its dig- 
nity in spite of reverses, and is marked by an air 
of quaint gravity. It may be called picturesque 
without offence to the inhabitants, who rejoice 
in its repose and natural beauty, and do not 
complain because their wharves are not so busy 
as they used to be. The social life there had a 
distinction of its own, which has not vanished, 
though the names identified with the town's fame 



12 THE HOOSIERS 

— Lanier, Hendricks, Bright, King, and Mar- 
shall — have slowly disappeared, and few of the 
old regime remain. The juxtaposition of Ken- 
tucky was not without an influence in the years 
of the town's ascendancy, and there was no little 
sympathy with Southern political ideas in the 
antebellum days. 

Brookville is another town which, like Madi- 
son, sent forth many men to bring fame to other 
communities. It lies in the White Water Valley, 
amid one of the loveliest landscapes in all 
Hoosierdom. The Wallaces, the Nobles, and 
the Rays were identified with the place, and each 
of these families gave a governor to the State. 
Abram A. Hammond, still another governor, 
lived there for a short time, as did James B. 
Eads, the distinguished engineer, who was 
a native of Lawrenceburg ; and William M. 
Chase, the artist, also a native Hoosier, is on 
Brookville's list of notables. John D. Howland 
and his brother, Livingston, lived there before 
their removal to Indianapolis, where the former 
was one of the most cultivated men of his day, 
and the latter a creditable judge, and a wit 
much quoted by his contemporaries. Centerville 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 1 3 

lives principally in its memories, having been 
the home of the Mortons, and of others who 
attained distinction. The removal of the seat of 
Wayne County to Richmond dealt the town a 
blow from which it has never recovered, though 
it shares with its successful rival in the rep- 
utation which the county enjoys for the culti- 
vation of its people. The family of Robert 
Underwood Johnson was prominent in Wayne 
County ; and though the poet and editor was not 
born there, he lived in the county from early 
infancy until his graduation in 1871 from Earl- 
ham College, whose seat is Richmond. His 
cousin, Mrs. Alice Williams Brotherton, the 
author of two volumes of verse, and a contribu- 
tor to the periodicals, Hved as a young woman 
at Cambridge, in the same county. Fort Wayne 
has always stood a little apart from the capital 
and the other towns lying nearer the Ohio. This 
has been due to its geographical position and 
direct railway connection with Chicago and the 
seaboard cities. Socially and commercially it 
has not been so intimately related to the capital 
as most of the other Indiana towns; but 
it was an important centre, with unmistakable 



14 THE HOOSIERS 

metropolitan airs almost as soon as Indianapolis. 
Fort Wayne's list of distinguished citizens has 
included Hugh McCulloch, a native of Maine, 
who was Secretary of the Treasury under two 
presidents, and Jesse Lynch Williams, of North 
Carolina Quaker stock, who was prominently 
identified with canal and railroad building in 
Indiana. Mr. Williams was a leader in good 
works throughout his long Hfe. Mr. McCulloch 
wrote " Men and Measures," a volume of 
memoirs, and his family has produced a poet. 
A grandson and namesake of Mr. Williams is 
the author of several volumes of fiction. 

Lafayette is one of the most attractive of 
Indiana cities, fortunate in its natural setting 
and in the friendliness of its people to all 
good endeavors. Purdue University, the state 
school of technology, which is situated there, 
is not diligent in the sciences to the neglect 
of the arts. Roswell Smith (i 829-1 892), the 
founder of the Century Magazine, practised 
law for twenty years at Lafayette. Terre 
Haute has been the home of distinguished 
politicians rather than of famous literary folk ; 
but Richard W. Thompson, who became Secre- 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 15 

tary of the Navy in President Hayes's cabi- 
net, was a writer of books ; and Daniel W. 
Voorhees, long a senator in Congress, was 
the greatest forensic orator of his day in 
the Ohio Valley. Voorhees had none of the 
qualities essential in a great lawyer, but he 
was most effective as a speaker before the 
people. The code of 1852 contained a pro- 
vision giving to the defence the final plea to 
the jury in criminal trials ; but this was changed 
in 1873 because it had become notorious that 
Voorhees and others of similar persuasive pow- 
ers could almost invariably procure the acquit- 
tal of persons charged with the gravest crimes 
by appealing to the natural sympathies and 
domestic attachments of the jurors. Voorhees 
received from Berry Sulgrove the name of 
the "tall sycamore of the Wabash." His 
appearance was commanding, and many of 
the dangerous qualities that go to the making 
of personal magnetism were combined in him. 
Thomas H. Nelson, also of the Terre Haute 
group, was worthy to be named with Thomp- 
son and Voorhees as an orator, though never 
so widely known as they. He was a native 



l6 THE HOOSIERS 

of Kentucky, and an accomplished man of 
the world, who filled acceptably several diplo- 
matic positions. Salem, in Washington County, 
is another of the older towns that contained 
in its earliest years families of marked cul- 
tivation. John Hay, the author, diplomat, 
and cabinet officer, and Newton Booth, gov- 
ernor of California and senator in Congress 
from that State, were born there. At least 
one generation benefited by the instruction 
of John I. Morrison, sometimes called "the 
Hoosier Arnold," who sent out from the Salem 
Seminary in the third decade of the century 
a group of men destined to take high place 
in nearly every field that called for character 
and intelligence. Hanover, the seat of Han- 
over College, enjoyed a somev/hat similar at- 
mosphere, and Noble Butler, who afterward 
became, at Louisville, the teacher in literature 
and elocution of Mary Anderson, the actress, 
was one of the Hanover faculty. 

Indianapolis was planned under the direction 
of Christopher Harrison, a man of varied 
talents, who buried himself in the wilderness 
of Southern Indiana early in the century, fol- 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 1 7 

lowed by the shadowy tradition that he had 
been an unsuccessful suitor for the hand of 
Miss Patterson, the famous Baltimore beauty 
who married Jerome Bonaparte. Emerging 
from his exile, he became a resident of Salem, 
sought consolation in politics, and was elected 
lieutenant-governor in 18 16. Among those 
who assisted in marking the lines of the new 
city was Alexander Ralston, a Scotchman, who 
had aided in a similar task at the national capi- 
tal, and who brought to his work a fancy for 
diagonal avenues and broad streets pleasantly 
suggestive of Washington. Ralston was said to 
have been obscurely implicated in Burr's con- 
spiracy ; but he became a resident within the 
boundaries he had drawn for the capital in 
the woods, and died there, an exemplary citi- 
zen. Indianapolis was named by Jeremiah 
Sullivan, in the legislature of 1821, which 
formally designated the site of the new capi- 
tal. The older towns on the Ohio and in 
the White Water Valley contributed at once 
to the population of the place, and the cur- 
rents of migration from the East and South 
met there. Dr. Eggleston described the town 



1 8 THE HOOSIERS 

in his novel " Roxy " as it appeared in 
1840: — 

" The stumps stood in the streets ; the mud was only 
navigable to a man on a tall horse ; the buildings were 
ugly and unpainted, the people were raw immigrants 
dressed in butternut jeans, and for the most part afflicted 
either with the ' agur ' or the ' yellow janders ' ; the taverns 
were new wooden buildings with swinging signs that 
creaked in the wind, their floors being well coated with a 
yellow adode from the boots of the guests. The alkaline 
biscuits on the table were yellow like the floors ; the fried 
' middling ' looked much the same ; the general yellowness 
had extended to the walls and the bed clothing, and, com- 
bined with the butternut jeans and copperas-dyed linsey- 
woolsey of the clothes, it gave the universe an air of having 
the jaundice." 

Old residents pronounce the description unfair ; 
but however crude the earlier years may have 
been, the founders were faithful to the settle- 
ment, and among those who were there before 
1840 were the Fletcher, Morris, Merrill, Coe, 
Ray, Blake, Sharpe, Yandes, and Holliday fami- 
lies, which were to be associated with the best 
that was thought and done in the community. 
In 1839 Henry Ward Beecher became pastor of 
the Second Presbyterian Church, and he was a 
useful citizen through the nine years of his 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 19 

residence. Good lecture courses were pro- 
vided so early as 1855, and Edward Everett, 
Bayard Taylor, Dr. Holland, Theodore Parker, 
Park Benjamin, and Ole Bull were cordially 
welcomed. The Civil War disturbed the old 
order, lifting into social and political promi- 
nence men who had had no connection with the 
original leaders. Unfriendly feeling between 
the Eastern element and the Southerners had 
already been manifested in political contests, 
and the war greatly intensified it. " Copper- 
head " was the term of most odious signifi- 
cance known to the majority of Indianians 
during the war, and it continued to be such 
for many years afterward. 

The club idea took hold in Indiana early, 
and societies for the study of art, music, and 
literature have by no means been limited to 
the capital. The Indianapolis Literary Club, 
formed in 1877, has illustrated perhaps better 
than any other expression of the life of Indi- 
ana, the quality of the men who have domi- 
nated there in the last three decades. In a 
State where not to be an author is to be dis- 
tinguished, the members have written and read 



20 THE HOOSIERS 

their essays in that spirit of true cultivation 
which takes its aspirations and attainments as 
a matter of course, and not too seriously. A 
president and a vice-president of the United 
States have been on the club's rolls, as have 
cabinet officers, senators in Congress and foreign 
ministers ; but literary and ethical questions, 
oftener than political problems, have vexed its 
discussions, and it has been more interested as a 
society in Newman, Arnold, and Emerson, and 
in the thwarting of the Zeitgeist^ than in mate- 
rial things. The women of Indiana have been 
important contributors to all agencies that 
tend toward ideal living, and at Indianapolis 
they have exerted an intelligent and beneficent 
influence in literature. 

The first governors and law-givers were dis- 
tinctly not of the bucolic type ; and it is an 
interesting fact of Indiana history that in an 
agricultural State, where the '' farmer's vote " 
has been essential to the winning party, farm- 
ers have rarely found their way to the gov- 
ernor's chair. James D. Williams, familiarly 
known as " Blue Jeans," who was elected over 
Benjamin Harrison in 1876, was the first 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 21 

farmer pure and simple to hold the office of gov- 
ernor ; and this was not until Indiana had been 
sixty years a State, and had passed beyond the 
period in which an appeal to " Jeffersonian sim- 
plicity " would naturally have been most potent. 
The second farmer to be elected governor was 
Claude Matthews, who was a candidate in 
the year of Mr. Cleveland's second success, 
and he was a college graduate and a man of 
affairs, and not really of the farmer type. 
When, in 1896, for the third time, the State 
went to the country for a governor, James A. 
Mount, a scientific farmer and reformer of 
farm methods, was chosen. The name of 
Posey County has long been used as a syno- 
nym for any dark and forbidding land ; but 
the public services of Thomas Posey, the last 
of Indiana's territorial governors, for whom 
the district was named, were of marked vari- 
ety and value, so that the name can hardly 
be used as a term of opprobrium, particularly 
of the county that harbored the New Har- 
mony settlement. After Indiana had gained 
the dignity of statehood, and throughout her 
earlier years, she continued fortunate in the 



22 THE HOOSIERS 

class of men to whom she gave her high- 
est honors. Jennings, the first governor, was 
a native of New Jersey. He was a fair 
scholar and wrote creditable EngUsh. The 
Hendricks family came from Pennsylvania and 
contributed two governors to the State, and a 
vice-president to the nation ; and the name 
remains after a century locally significant of 
character and attainment. David Wallace, the 
father of General Lew Wallace, and Joseph 
A. Wright, who was prominent in affairs in 
the earlier half of the century, were natives 
of Pennsylvania. Wallace had been educated 
at West Point, but resigned from the army to 
take up the law; he became noted as an ora- 
tor and was governor of the State. Wright, 
who paid his way through Indiana University 
by acting as janitor, became governor, sat in 
the United States Senate, and was minister to 
Prussia. Governor Whitcomb was a native of 
Vermont, Governor Willard of New York, and 
Morton, the foremost man of the Civil War 
period in the State, was a native Indianian. 

Isaac Blackford (i 786-1 859), for thirty-five 
years a justice of the Supreme Court in Indi- 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 23 

ana, was a native of New Jersey and an alum- 
nus of Princeton. He was one of the ablest 
judges the State has ever known, and his opin- 
ions as they appear in the eight volumes of 
reports which he published are models of lucid 
and direct writing. The law has always been 
served in Indiana by able men ; and it is a 
satisfaction to contemplate the bench and bar 
of the earliest times, when the court was itin- 
erant. Under the first constitution the Circuit 
Court bench consisted of a presiding judge, 
who sat in all the courts of a circuit, and of 
two associate justices, elected in each county, 
who were usually not lawyers. They were 
supposed to insure an element of common- 
sense equity in the judiciary, and even had 
power to overrule the presiding judge and 
give the opinion of the court. But the law- 
yers had little respect for the associate justices, 
and if the presiding judge could not attend a 
sitting of the court, they declined to submit 
important cases, and sought diversion at the 
expense of the associate justices by raising 
profound questions of abstract law. An attor- 
ney named Pitcher once used the phrase de 



24 THE HOOSIERS 

minimis non cicrat lex before an associate jus^ 
tice described by Robert Dale Owen as an 
illiterate farmer, short of stature, lean of per- 
son, and acrid of temper. The learned coun- 
sel had expected to translate for the benefit 
of the bench, but before he could speak, the jus- 
tice interrupted impatiently, " Come, Pitcher, 
none of your Pottawattomie ; give us plain 
English." The lawyer did not pause or look 
at the court, but continued talking to the jury. 
"The case," said he, "turns chiefly on that 
well-known legal axiom which I have already 
had occasion to bring to your notice, — de 
minimis non curat lex, — which, when reduced 
to the capacity of this honorable court, means 

— observe, gentlemen, means that the law 
does not care for little, trifling things, and," 

— turning sharply around on the diminutive 
figure of the justice, — "neither do I!" 

The first court houses were usually frame or 
log buildings of two rooms, one for the grand 
jury and the other for the court. A pole 
stretched across the room separated the mem- 
bers of the bar from the populace. Spectators 
travelled hundreds of miles to attend court and 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 2$ 

hear the lawyers " plead." The young attor- 
neys, called " squires," long clung to the queue 
as a kind of badge of their profession, and 
were prone to disport themselves before the 
rustics in the court yards of strange towns. ^ 
Good humor prevailed on the circuit ; the long 
horseback journeys brought health and appe- 
tite, and cheerful landlords welcomed the bar 
at every county seat. Good horses, trained to 
corduroy roads and swimming, were a neces- 
sary part of the lawyer's equipment ; and 
a little quiet horse-trading between court-sit- 
tings was not considered undignified. The 
itinerant courts contributed to the political 
advantage of the attorneys, taking them con- 
stantly before the people of a wide area. 
Political ambition was usual, and the lawyers 
frequently cherished the hope of sitting in the 
State legislature, or of reaching the bench, 
with a State office or the United States Senate 
as their farthest goal. 

The even balance maintained between the 
two greater parties in Indiana through many 
years gave a zest to all political contests. 

1 Smith's ♦' Early Indiana Trials," p. 6. 



26 THE HOOSIERS 

Whether the Hoosiers have expressed wise 
preferences or not in the years in which their 
vote has been of consequence in national strug- 
gles may be questioned, but it is interesting to 
remember that Indiana and New York gave 
their electoral vote for the same candidate for 
the presidency at every election between 1872 
and 1896, and that their vote in all these years, 
except in 1876, was with the winning side. 
Political independence has been fostered to 
good purpose ; in recent years there have been 
instances of praiseworthy courage in the protest 
against party tyranny. In no other Western 
State has the idea of the merit system been 
propagated so vigorously as in Indiana. Lu- 
cius B. Swift, of Indianapolis, and William Dud- 
ley Foulke, of Richmond, were leaders in the 
movement for civil service reform, and enlisted 
under them from the beginning in a roll of 
honor were Oliver T. Morton, Louis Rowland, 
Charles S. and Allen Lewis, of Indianapolis, 
and Henry M. Williams, of Fort Wayne. 
Indiana University and Franklin and Butler 
Colleges also gave moral support. Mr. Swift 
began, in 1889, the Chronicle^ a small paper 



INDIANA AND HER PEOPLE 2/ 

whose publication was not undertaken for 
profit. For seven years, or until its object had 
been attained, he made it a merciless assailant 
of civil service abuses, local and national. 
When the historian of civil service reform 
comes to his task he will find that the Chronicle 
has in many ways simplified his labors. 

The successes of several Indiana authors 
were a great stimulus to literary ambition in 
Indiana; and the literary clubs were an addi- 
tional encouragement. Poetry seems to the 
amateur much more easily achieved than prose, 
and poets rose in every quarter of the State in 
the years following the general recognition of 
James Whitcomb Riley and Maurice Thompson. 
There was a time in Indiana when it was 
difficult to forecast who would next turn poet, 
suggesting the Tractarian period in England, 
of which Birrell writes that so prolific were the 
pamphleteers at the high tide of the movement 
that a tract might at any time be served upon 
one suddenly, like a sheriff's process. At Indian- 
apolis the end seemed to have been reached when 
a retired banker, who had never been suspected, 
began to inveigle friends into his office on the 



28 THE HOOSIERS 

pretence of business, but really to read them 
his own verses. Charles Dennis, a local jour- 
nalist, declared that there had appeared in the 
community a peculiar crooking of the right 
elbow and a furtive sliding of the hand into the 
left inside pocket, which was an unfailing pre- 
liminary to the reading of a poem. Rhyming is, 
however, the least harmful of amusements, and 
so fastidious a poet as Gray expressed his belief 
that even a bad verse is better than the best 
observation ever made upon it. 

" But Time, who soonest drops the heaviest things 
That weight his pack, will carry diamonds long ; " 

and as the office of the discourager of genius 
is an ungrateful one, it is doubtless well that 
many should implore the gods, in the faith 
that an occasional prayer will be answered. 



CHAPTER II 

THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 

The origin of the term " Hoosier " is not 
known with certainty. It has been applied 
to the inhabitants of Indiana for many years, 
and, after " Yankee," it is probably the sobri- 
quet most famous as applied to the people 
of a particular division of the country. So 
early as 1830, "Hoosier" must have had 
an accepted meaning, within the State at 
least, for John Finley printed in that year, 
as a New Year's address for the Indianapolis 
Journal, a poem called "The Hoosier Nest," 
in which the word occurs several times. It 
is a fair assumption that its meaning was 
not obscure, or it would not have been used 
in a poem intended for popular reading. 
" Hoosier " seems to have found its first 
literary employment in Finley's poem. Sul- 
grove, who was an authority in matters of 
local history, was disposed to concede this 
29 



30 THE HOOSIERS 

point.^ The poem is interesting for its glimpse 
of Indiana rural life of the early period. Fin- 
ley was a Virginian who removed to Indiana 
in 1823 and had been living in the State 
seven years when he published his poem. 
He was an accomplished and versatile gen- 
tleman, and his verses, as collected in 1866, 
show superior talents. One of his poems, 
" Bachelor's Hall," has often been attributed 
to Thomas Moore. The " Hoosier Nest " is 
the home of a settler, which a traveller hailed 
at nightfall. Receiving a summons to enter, 
the stranger walked in, — . 

" Where half a dozen Hoosieroons 
With mush-and-milk, tin cups and spoons, 
White heads, bare feet and dirty faces 
Seemed much inclined to keep their places." 

The stranger was invited to a meal of venison, 
milk, and johnny-cake, and as he sat at the 
humble board he made an inventory of the 
cabin's contents : — 

" One side was lined with divers garments, 
The other spread with skins of varmints ; 

1 " History of Indianapolis and Marion County," p. 72. 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 31 

Dried pumpkins overhead were strung, 
Where venison hams in plenty hung ; 
Two rifles placed above the door ; 
Three dogs lay stretched upon the floor, — 
In short, the domicile was rife 
With specimens of Hoosier life." 

" Hoosieroons " is never heard now, and was 
probably invented by Finley for the sake 
of the rhyme. Both Governor Wright and 
O. H. Smith were of the opinion that " Hoosier " 
was a corruption of " Who's here " (^yere or 
hyer)\ and Smith ^ has sought to dramatize 
its history : — 

" The night was dark, the rain falling in torrents, when 
the inmates of a small log cabin in the woods of early 
Indiana were aroused from their slumbers by a low knock- 
ing at the only door of the cabin. The man of the house, 
as he had been accustomed to do on like occasions, rose 
from his bed and hallooed, 'Who's here?' The outsiders 
answered, ' Friends, out bird-catching. Can we stay till 
morning ? ' The door was opened, and the strangers 
entered. A good log fire soon gave light and warmth to 
the room. Stranger to the host : ' What did you say when 
I knocked ?' 'I said, Who's here?' 'I thought you said 
Hoosier.' The bird-catchers left after breakfast, but next 
night returned and hallooed at the door, ' Hoosier ; ' and 
from that time the Indianians have been called Hoosiers." 

1 " Early Indiana Trials," p. 450. 



32 THE HOOSIERS 

This is the explanation usually given to 
inquirers within the State. The objection has 
sometimes been raised to this story, that the 
natural reply to a salutation in the wilder- 
ness would be *' Who's there ? " out of which 
**Hoosier" could hardly be formed; but care- 
ful observers of Western and Southern dia- 
lects declare that "Who's hyer?" was, and in 
obscure localities remains, the common answer 
to a midnight hail. 

Sulgrove related the incident of an Irish- 
man, employed in excavating the canal around 
the falls at Louisville, who declared after a 
fight in which he had vanquished several 
fellow-laborers that he was "a husher," and 
this was offered as a possible origin of the 
word. The same writer suggested another ex- 
planation, that a certain Colonel Lehmanowski, 
a Polish officer who lectured through the West 
on Napoleon's wars, pronounced Hussar in a 
way that captivated some roystering fellow, who 
applied the word to himself in self-glorification, 
pronouncing it " Hoosier." Lehmanowski's 
identity has been established as a sojourner in 
Indiana, and his son was a member of an Indiana 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 33 

regiment in the Civil War. The Rev. Aaron 
Woods ^ is another contributor to the literature of 
the subject, giving the Lehmanowski story with 
a few variations. When the young men of the 
Indiana side of the Ohio crossed over to Louis- 
ville, the Kentuckians made sport of them, 
calling them " New Purchase greenies," and 
declaring that they of the southern side of the 
river were a superior race, composed of *' half- 
alligator, half-horse, and tipped off with snap- 
ping turtle ! " Fighting grew out of these 
boasts in the market place and streets of Louis- 
ville. An Indiana visitor who had heard 
Lehmanowski lecture on '' The Wars of Europe " 
and been captivated by the prowess of the 
Hussars, whipped one of the Kentuckians, and 
bending over him cried, " I'm a Hoosier," mean- 
ing, " I'm a Hussar." Mr. Woods adds that he 
was living in the State at the time and that this 
was the true origin of the term. This is, how- 
ever, hardly conclusive. The whole Lehmanow- 
ski story seems to be based on communication 
between Indiana and Kentucky workmen during 
the building of the Ohio Falls Canal. The orig- 
i« Sketches," p. 45. 



34 THE HOOSIERS 

inal canal was completed in 1830; and as the 
Polish soldier was not in this region earlier than 
1840, ten years after the appearance of Finley's 
poem, it is clear that those who would reach the 
truth of the matter must go back of " The Hoosier 
Nest " to find secure ground. No one has ever 
pretended that Finley originated the word, and 
it is not at all likely that he did so ; but his 
poem gave it wide currency, and doubtless had 
much to do with fixing it on the Indianians. 
Bartlett, in his " Dictionary of Americanisms," 
gives the novel solution of the problem that the 
men of superior strength throughout the early 
West, the heroes of log-rollings and house- 
raisings, were called "hushers" because of 
their ability to hush or quiet their antagonists ; 
and that " husher " was a common term for a 
bully. The Ohio River boatmen carried the 
word to New Orleans, where a foreigner among 
them, in attempting to apply the word to him- 
self, pronounced it "Hoosier." Sulgrove may 
have had this meaning in mind in citing his 
Irishman, though he is not explicit. Hoosier as 
a Christian name has been known in the Ohio 
Valley ; it was borne by a member of the Indiana 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 35 

Methodist Conference in 1835. A Louisville 
baker named Hoosier made a variety of sweet 
bread which was so much affected by Indiana 
people that they were called '* Hoosier's cus- 
tomers," ** Hoosier's men," and so on; but 
no date can be found for this. The Rev. 
T. A. Goodwin, first heard the word at Cin- 
cinnati in 1830, where it described a species 
of gingerbread, but without reference to 
Indiana. 

It is clear that the cultivated people of Indi- 
ana recognized the nickname in the early half 
of the century. Wright and Smith, as men- 
tioned above, had sought to determine its 
genesis; and Tilghman A. Howard, when a 
congressman from Indiana, writing home to a 
friend in 1840, spoke casually of the "Hoosier 
State." 1 The word occurs familiarly in Hall's 
*' New Purchase" (1855), and it is found also in 
Beste's rare volume, "The Wabash; or, Adve» 
tures of an English Gentleman's Family in the 
Interior of America," published at London in 
the same year, and in Mrs. Beecher's " From 
Dawn to Daylight" (1859). And when, in 

1 Woollen's " Sketches," p. 265. 



36 THE HOOSIERS 

1867, Sandford C. Cox published a book ot 

verses containing the couplet, — 

"If Sam is right, I would suggest 
A native Hoosier as the best," — 

the word was widely known, and thereafter it 
frequently occurs in all printed records touching 
the State. It is reported from Tennessee, Vir- 
ginia, and South Carolina by independent ob- 
servers, who say that the idea of a rough 
countryman is always associated with it. In 
Missouri it is sometimes used thus abstractly, 
but a native Indianian is usually meant, with- 
out reference to his manners or literacy. 

No reader of Hoosier chronicles can fail 
to be impressed by the relation of the great 
forests to the people who came to possess and 
tame them. Before they reached the Indiana 
wilderness in their advance before civilization, 
the stalwart pioneers had swung their axes in 
Pennsylvania or Kentucky, and had felt the 
influence of the great, gloomy woodlands in 
their lives ; but in Indiana this influence was 
greatly intensified. They experienced an isola- 
tion that is not possible to-day in any part of 
the country, and the loss of nearly every civil- 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 37 

izing agency that men value. These frontiers- 
men could hardly have believed themselves the 
founders of a permanent society, for the exact 
topography of much of their inheritance was 
unknown to them ; large areas were submerged 
for long periods, and the density of the woods 
increased the difficulty of building roads and 
knitting the scattered clearings and villages 
into a compact and sensitive commonwealth. 
Once cleared, the land yielded a precarious 
living to the pioneers in return for their labors 
and sacrifices ; after the first dangers from 
beasts of prey, the pestiferous small animals 
anticipated the harvest and ate the corn. One 
ear in four acres remained after the gray squir- 
rels had taken their pleasure in a Johnson 
County field. ^ Sheep were out of the question 
on account of the wolves ; and always present 
and continuing were the fevers that preyed on 
the worn husbandmen and sent many to prema- 
ture graves. The women, deprived of every 
comfort, contributed their share of the labor, 
making homes of their cabins ; dyeing the wool, 
when they had it, with the ooze of the walnut, 

1 Banta's " Johnson County," p. 55. 



38 THE HOOSIERS 

carding, spinning, and weaving it, and finally 
cutting the cloth into garments ; or if linen 
were made, following the flax from the field 
through all the processes of manufacture until 
it clothed the family. 

The pioneers could not see then, as their 
children see now, that the wilderness was a 
factor in their destiny; that it drove them in 
upon themselves, strengthening their independ- 
ence in material things by shutting them off 
from older communities, and that it even fast- 
ened upon their tongues the peculiarities of 
speech which they had brought with them into 
the wilderness. But their isolation compelled 
meditation, and when reading matter penetrated 
the woodlands it was usually worth the trouble 
of transportation in a day of few roads and 
little travel. The pioneers knew their Bibles 
and named their children for the Bible heroes, 
and most of their other books were reHgious. 
There have been worse places in which to form 
habits of thought, and to lay the foundation for 
a good manner of writing our language, than 
the Hoosier cabin. Lying before the fireplace 
in his father's humble Spencer County home 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 39 

during the fourteen years that the family spent 
in Indiana, — years that were of the utmost im- 
portance in his life, — Abraham Lincoln studied 
his few books and caught the elusive language- 
spirit that later on gave character and beauty 
to his utterances. 

The social life of the first comers also drew 
its inspiration from their environment, and 
was expressed in log-rolling, house-raising, 
and other labors that could best be done by 
cooperation, and which they concluded usu- 
ally, in a fashion quite characteristic, with a 
frolic. After the axe, the rifle was most 
important among their belongings ; for they 
trusted largely to the fortunes of the hunt 
for food ; and peltries became a valuable 
medium of exchange in their simple economy. 
Expertness in the use of the rifle and friendly 
rivalry in marksmanship among the settlers 
led to other social gatherings ; and even pro- 
fessional men took pride in the sport and par- 
ticipated in these contests. The militia system 
in the early days was not an important fea- 
ture of Hoosier life. The Hoosier's sense of 
humor has always been keen, and where, as 



40 THE HOOSIERS 

once occurred on muster day in the White 
Water country, a part of the officer's duty 
was to separate wearers of shoes from those 
who appeared in moccasins, and bearers of 
cornstalks from those who carried rifles, there 
was nothing of the pomp and pageantry of 
war to captivate the imagination of the people. 

The Hoosier fiddle was a factor in all the 
festivities of the country folk. The fiddler 
was frequently an eccentric genius, ranking 
with the rural poet, who was often merely a 
maker of idle rhymes ; however, the country 
fiddler in Indiana has held his own against 
latter-day criticism and the competition of the 
village brass band. Governor Whitcomb en- 
joyed local fame as a violinist, and Berry 
Sulgrove and General Lew Wallace, in their 
younger years, were skilful with the bow. 
Dr. H. W. Taylor, a conscientious student of 
early Hoosier customs, connects the Hoosier 
fiddler with the Scotch Highlanders, and has 
expressed his belief ^ that the Highlander folk 
coming to the United States naturally sought 
the mountain country of Virginia, North Caro- 

1 The Current, November, 1884. 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 4 1 

lina, Tennessee, and Georgia, and that the 
Scotch fiddle and its traditions survive princi- 
pally in these mountainous countries. We are 
told that the fiddle of the Hoosiers is an exotic 
and cannot long survive, though fifteen years 
after this prediction a contest of Hoosier 
fiddlers was held in the largest hall at Indian- 
apolis, and many musicians of this old school 
appeared from the back districts to compete 
for the prizes. The great aim of the old time 
fiddlers was to make their instruments "talk." 
Their tunes enjoyed such euphonious names 
as "Old Dan Tucker," "Old Zip Coon," 
" Possum up a Gum Stump," " Irish Washer- 
woman," "Waggoner," "Ground Spy," and 
"Jay Bird." Dr. Taylor discovered that the 
very Hoosier manner of bowing, i.e, fiddling, 
was derived from the Scotch, and he gives 
this description of it : " The arm, long, bony, 
and sinewy, was stretched forwards, down- 
wards, and outwards from the shoulder, and at 
full length. There was absolutely no movement 
of the wrist, a very little at the elbow, and just 
a degree more at the shoulder." Hall ironi- 
cally observed that the country fiddler could, 



42 THE HOOSIERS 

like Paganini, play one tune or parts of nearly 
two dozen tunes on one string ; and like the 
great maestro he played without notes, and with 
endless flourishes. He gives this attractive por- 
trait of one of the New Purchase fiddlers : — 

" He held his fiddle against his breast — perhaps out of 
affection — and his bow in the middle, and like a cart- 
whip ; things enabling him, however, the more effectually 
to flog his instrument when rebellious ; and the afflicted 
creature would scream right out in agony ! Indeed, his 
Scremonah bore marks of premature old age — its finger- 
board being indented with little pits, and its stomach was 
frightfully incrusted with rosin and other gummy things, 
till it looked as dark and careworn as Methuselah ! Dan 
was, truly, no niggard of ' rosum,' for he ' greased ' as he 
termed it, between his tunes every time ! and then, at his 
first few vigorous jerks, fell a shower of dust on the agitated 
bosom of his instrument, calling out in vain for mercy 
under the cruel punishment." ^ 

James Whitcomb Riley corroborates the im- 
pression of earlier writers in a characteristic 
poem, "My Fiddle :" 2 — 

" My playin's only middlin' — tunes I picked up when a 
boy — 
The kind o'-sort o' fiddlin' that the folks calls ' cordaroy ' ; 

1 "The New Purchase," p. 401. 

2 " Neighborly Poems," p. 26.' 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 43 

<The Old Fat Gal' and < Rye-Straw,' and 'My Sailyor's 

on the Sea,' 
Is the old cowtillions / * saw ' when the ch'ice is left to 
me; 

And so I plunk and plonk and plink 

And rosum-up my bow, 
And play the tunes that make you think 
The devil's in your toe! " 

In several of the Southern Indiana counties 
the least admirable traits of the ancestors of the 
" poor whites " who came in from the South 
have been continued into a third and fourth gen- 
eration ; but these do not appear prominently 
in any fair or comprehensive examination of the 
people. Much has been written of the lawless- 
ness of Indianians, and lynching and white- 
capping have sporadically been reported from 
many of the southern counties. An attorney- 
general of the State who had brought all the 
machinery of the law to bear upon particular 
instances of lynching during his term of office, 
and who had given much study to the phenom- 
ena presented by these outbreaks, expressed his 
opinion that the right of way of the Baltimore 
and Southwestern Railway marked the *' lynch- 
ing belt " in Indiana. Statistics in confirmation 



44 THE HOOSIERS 

are lacking, but it is safe to say that a large 
percentage of the lynchings reported in the 
State have occurred either in counties on the line 
of the road or in those immediately adjoining. 
Lynchings have also occurred in at least half 
a dozen counties north of Indianapolis, so that 
all the crimes of this sort perpetrated in Indi- 
ana cannot be charged to the descendants of the 
*' poor whites " in the more Southern counties. 
Lynching has not been viewed with apathy, and 
every instance of it has been followed by vig- 
orous efforts at punishment. In 1889 a drastic 
law was added to the statutes, defining lynching 
and providing severe penalties. It struck to 
the quick of the matter by making possible the 
impeachment of law officers who yield prison- 
ers to a mob. But under any circumstances 
these people are so intensely clannish that even 
the sincerest prosecution usually fails for lack 
of witnesses. The Hon. W. A. Ketcham, State 
attorney-general, after heroic efforts to fix re- 
sponsibility for the lynching of five men in Rip- 
ley County on the night of September 14, 1898, 
gravely stated in his official report that he had 
applied the Sherlock Holmes principle to the in- 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 45 

cident ; that is to say, after excluding every other 
possible hypothesis he had assumed the correct- 
ness of the one remaining, and this he stated 
in his syllabus ^ of the case to be: ''That A 
broke jail and travelled across the country to the 
town where the revolver had been pawned, a 
distance of seven miles, broke into the store, 
stole the revolver, returned again, broke back 
into jail, shot himself, then killed B and C and 
hung their dead bodies to a tree, put the finishing 
touches to his crime by hanging D and E, and 
then in order that suspicion might be directed 
against innocent men, finally hanged himself."^ 
The milder form of outlawry, known as ** white- 
capping," has also been practised in Indiana 
occasionally, and sometimes with barbarous 
cruelty ; but it, like lynching, is not peculiar to 
the State, and its extent has been greatly exag- 
gerated by Eastern newspapers. 

It has been insisted by loyal Indianians that 
the speech of the later generations of natives is 
almost normal English ; that the rough vernac- 
ular of their ancestors has been ground down 
in the schools, and that the dictionaries are 

1 Report of W. A. Ketcham, attorney-general, 1897-8, p. 173. 



46 THE HOOSIERS 

rapidly sanctioning new words, once without 
authority, that inevitably crept into common 
speech through the necessities of pioneer ex- 
pression. It may fairly be questioned whether, 
properly speaking, there ever existed a Hoo- 
sier dialect. The really indigenous Indiana 
words and novel pronunciations are so few as to 
make but a poor showing when collected ; and 
while the word "dialect" is employed as a 
term of convenience in this connection, it can 
only be applied to a careless manner of speak- 
ing, in which novel words are merely incidental. 
A book of colloquial terms, like Green's "Vir- 
ginia Word Book," could hardly be compiled 
for Indiana without infringing upon the prior 
claims of other and older States to the greater 
part of it. The so-called Hoosier dialect, where 
it survives at all, is the speech of the first 
American settlers in Indiana, greatly modified 
by time and schooling, but retaining, both in the 
employment of colloquial terms and in pronun- 
ciation, the peculiarities that were carried west- 
ward from tide water early in the nineteenth 
century. The distinctive Indiana countryman, 
the real Hoosier, who has been little in contact 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 47 

with the people of cities, speaks a good deal 
as his Pennsylvania or North Carolina or Ken- 
tucky grandfather or great-grandfather did be- 
fore him, and has created nothing new. His 
speech contains comparatively few words that 
are peculiar to the State or to communities 
within it ; but in the main it shares such devia- 
tions from normal or Hterary English with the 
whole Southwest. 

In his book " The Wabash " Beste describes 
his interview with an Indiana carpenter, who 
questioned whether the traveller was really an 
Englishman, because his speech was unlike 
that of the usual English immigrants whose 
trouble with the aspirate had evoked derisive 
comment among the Americans. This occurs 
in his chapter on Indianapolis, in which the 
carpenter is quoted thus : 

" ' You do not say ' ouse ' and ' and ' for * house ' and 
* hand ' ; all the children, and all of you, pronounce all 
these words like Americans, and not as real English pro- 
nounce them. Their way of speaking makes us always 
say that we talk better English than the English them- 
selves.' I had, indeed, often heard the Americans laughed 
at for saying so ; but now the matter was explained. My 
carpenter repeated with great accuracy various instances 



48 THE HOOSIERS 

of provincialisms and vulgarisms which he and all of them 
had noticed more or less, in all the English emigrants who 
had come amongst them. Seeing none of any other class, 
they naturally supposed that all English people pronounced 
Jhe language in the same manner, and so prided them- 
selves upon the superiority of American English. For 
notwithstanding the disagreeable nasal tone and drawling 
whine in which most of them speak, and notwithstanding 
a few national phrases and the peculiar use and pronuncia- 
tion of certain words, it must be admitted that the Ameri- 
can people, in general, speak English without provincial 
dialect or vulgarisms. Whence, in fact, could they ac- 
quire such, since all the emigrants they see came from 
different parts of England, and the provincialisms of the 
one neutraUze those of the other." 

Professor Whitney, in his " Language and 
the Study of Language," expresses in academic 
terms much the same idea.^ 

Lapses in pronunciation have never been 
punishable with death on the Wabash, as at 
the fords of the Jordan, where the shibboleth 
test of the Gileadites cost the Ephraimites forty 
and two thousand. The native Indianian is 
not sensitive about his speech and refuses to be 
humble before critics from the far East who 
say " idea-r " and " Philadelphia-r." James Whit- 

1 Fifth Edition, 1872, pp. 1 71-172. 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 49 

comb Riley has made the interesting and just 
observation that the average countryman knows 
in reality a wider range of diction than he per- 
mits himself to use, and that his abridgments 
and variations are attributable to a fear lest 
he may offend his neighbors by using the best 
language at his command.^ This is wholly 
true, and it is responsible in a measure for con- 
tributions to the common speech of local idioms 
and phrases. In rural Indiana and generally 
in the Southwest the phrase " 's th' fellah says '* 
is often used by a rustic to indicate his own 
appreciation of the fact that he has employed 
an unusual expression. Or it may be an actual 
quotation, as, for example, " Come over fer a 
visit, an' we'll treat you 'n a hostile manner, 
's Uncle Amos use t' say." This substitution 
of hostile for hospitable once enjoyed wide cur- 
rency in Indiana and Illinois. Sulgrove confirms 
Riley's impression : — 

" Correct pronunciation was positively regarded by the 
Southern immigration as a mark of aristocracy or, as 
they called it, 'quality.' The 'ing' in 'evening,' or 
• morning ' or any other words, was softened into ' in,' the 

1 The Forum, Vol. 14, p. 465. 



50 THE HOOSIERS 

fall sound being held finical and ' stuck up.' So it was no 
unusual thing to hear such a comical string of emasculated 
' nasals ' as the question of a prominent Indiana lawyer 
of the Kentucky persuasion, ' Where were you a-standin' 
at the time of your perceivin' of the hearin' of the firin' of 
the pistol ? ' . . . To ' set ' was the right way to sit ; an 
Indian did not scalp, he 'skelped'; a child did not long 
for a thing, he * honed' for it, — slang retains this Hoosier 
archaism ; a woman was not dull, she was ' daunsy ' ; com- 
monly a gun was * shot ' instead of fired in all moods and 
tenses." ^ 

While the French settlements in Indiana made 
no appreciable impression on the common speech, 
yet it has been assumed by some observers that 
the inclination at the South to throw the accent 
of words forward, as in gentlew^;^, sQttlQme^it, 
was fairly attributable to the influence of the 
French Catholics in Louisiana and of the Hugue- 
nots who were scattered through the South- 
eastern colonies, though this would seem a trifle 
finespun ; but the idiosyncrasy noted exists 
at the South, no matter what its real origin 
may have been, and it has been communicated 
in some measure through Southern influences 
to the middle Western people. However, South- 
ern Indianians sometimes say Tennes-sy, ac- 

1 Sulgrove, p. 90. 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECf 5 1 

centing the first syllable and slurring the last, 
illustrating again the danger of accepting any 
theories or fixing any rules for general guidance 
in such matters. Dr. Eggleston remembers 
only one French word that survived from old 
French times in the Wabash country, — " cor- 
delle, to tow a boat by a rope carried along the 
shore." The most striking influence in the 
Indiana dialect is that of the Scotch-Irish, who 
have left marked peculiarities of speech behind 
them wherever they have gone. Notwithstand- 
ing the fact that both the English Quakers and 
the Germans contributed largely to the settle- 
ment of Pennsylvania and of the Southeastern 
colonies, the idiosyncrasies of speech most per- 
ceptible in the regions deriving their population 
from those sources are plainly Scotch-Irish ; as, 
for example, the linguistic deficiency which 
makes strenth and lenth of strength and lengthy 
or biiiinle of bujtdle, and the use of 7tor for tha^i, 
after a comparative adjective. The use of into 
for in and whe^tever for as soon as are other 
Scotch-Irish peculiarities. These, however, are 
heard only in diminishing degree in Indiana, and 
many of the younger generations of Hoosiers 



52 THE HOOSIERS 

have never known them. The confusion of shall 
and will and of like and as is traceable to North- 
Irish influences, and is not pecuHar to the spoken 
language at the South and West, but is observed 
frequently in the newspapers, and is found even 
in books. 

The anonymous writer of ** Pioneer Annals " 
(1875), a rare pamphlet that contains much 
invaluable matter relating to the occupation 
of the White Water Valley, speaks of the prev- 
alence of Carolina Quakers among the first 
settlers of that region, and remarks that when 
newcomers were asked where they came from, 
the answer would be *' Guilford County, near 
Clemmens's Store " ; or " Beard's Hatter-shop " ; 
" Dobson's Cross Roads"; or "Deep-River 
Settlement of Friends." The same writer gives 
a dialect note which illustrates the ephemeral 
character of idiom. Sleys (slays) was a term 
applied by the Carolinians to the reeds used 
by them in their home-made looms. A Caro- 
lina emigrant bound for Indiana stopped at 
Cincinnati and offered to sell a supply of these. 
It was in August, and the storekeeper knew 
but one word having the same sound, sleighs, 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 53 

which were not used m Cincinnati in mid- 
summer. His ironical comment almost led 
to a personal encounter before the Carolinian 
could explain. John V. Hadley states in his 
" Seven Months a Prisoner " that ** Guilford 
County" and "Jamestown" (North Carolina) 
were household words in many families of Hen- 
dricks County (Indiana), where he lived. At 
Jamestown, on his way to Libby Prison, he 
was accosted by a citizen who asked whether 
a former neighbor who had moved to Indiana, 
but still owned property in North Carolina, 
had not enlisted in the Union army, the purpose 
of the inquiry being to obtain testimony on 
which to confiscate his estate. 

The circulation of newly coined words has 
been so rapid in late years, owing to the in- 
crease of communication between different 
parts of the country, and to dissemination by 
the newspapers, that few useful words origi- 
nating obscurely are likely to remain local. 
Lowell amused himself by tracing to unassaila- 
ble English sources terms that were assumed 
to be essentially American ; and if Chaucer 
and the Elizabethans may be invoked against 



54 THE HOOSIERS 

our rural communities, the word-hunter's sport 
has grown much simpler when he may cite 
a usage in one State to disestablish the prior- 
ity claimed for it in another. There is risk 
in all efforts to connect novel words with par- 
ticular communities, no matter how carefully 
it may be done, and it is becoming more and 
more difficult to separate real dialect from 
slang. Lists of unusual words that have been 
reported to the American Dialect Society 
afford interesting instances of the danger of 
accepting terms as local which are really in 
general use. The word rambunctious^ reported 
from New York State as expressing impu- 
dence and forwardness, cannot be peculiar 
to that region, 1 for it is used in Indiana in 
identically the same sense. Other words, col- 
lected through the same agency and common 
in Indiana, are : scads^ reported from Mis- 
souri, signifying a great quantity; and sights 
meaning a large amount, noted in New Eng- 
land and New York. Great hand for y mean- 
ing a penchant^ traced from Maine to Ohio, 
may be followed also into Indiana, but this, 

1 « Dialect Notes," Part VIII, p. 392. 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 55 

like druthers^ for a preference or choice, be- 
longs to the towns rather than to the coun- 
try. Go likcy in the sense of imitation, as ^' go 
like 2l rooster," is reported from both Maine 
and Indiana ; and foot-loose ^ meaning free and 
untrammelled, observed in Georgia, is used 
in the towns, at least, of Indiana. The natural 
disposition of Americans to exaggerate led to 
the creation by the Southeastern element in 
Indiana population of bodacious ly} a corruption 
of audaciously ; and to the employment of pow- 
erful ^ indiscriminately with big or little y as a 
particularly emphatic superlative. Curiously 
enough powerful^ which is usually identified 
with the earlier generations of the Southwest, 
is reported also from Eastern Massachusetts.^ 
Sarcumstansis for circumstances, b'ar for bear, 
and thar for there reached Indiana through Ken- 
tucky, and are now rarely heard. Dr. Eggle- 
ston employs the broad a in "The Graysons," 
where one character says bar while another 
pronounces the word correctly, explaining that 
words are not always pronounced the same 

1 "The New Purchase," p. 143. 

2 « Dialect Notes," Part IV, p. 211. 



$6 THE HOOSIERS 

in a dialect — an observation that has also 
been made by Mr. Riley. 

Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher, whose unamiable 
novel, " From Dawn to Daylight," is a dreary 
picture of Indiana life, gives a few interesting 
usages ; as a right smart chance of money, 
heap of plunder, sight stronger, proper hard, 
showing that her acquaintance was princi- 
pally with the Southern element, which she 
had known at Lawrenceburg and Indianapolis. 
Plunder, as a synonym for baggage, seems to 
be largely Southern and Western, and was 
probably derived from the Pennsylvania Ger- 
mans. The insolent intrusiveness of dialect 
is illustrated by the appearance of the word 
in its colloquial sense in the first chapter of 
General Wallace's " Prince of India." Dr. 
Eggleston in " The Graysons " gives weth for 
with, air for are, thes for just, sherf for 
sheriff^, and yet^s for here is. Indianians usually 
pronounce the name of their State correctly, 
though the final vowel sometimes becomes y. 
Benjamin S. Parker remembers that in the 
early days pioneers sometimes said Injuns, 
Injiana, and immejut ; but these usages are 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 57 

obsolete in the State.^ Mr. Riley frequently 
uses miled (mile), and yet the word is some- 
what similarly spoken on Nantucket, maild. 
Ornery, a vulgar form of ordinary, seems to 
be generally used, and has been observed in 
the Middle States as well as in Indiana and 
Kentucky. The injunction mind out, which 
is used in Kentucky in such admonitions as 
" mind out what you are doing," becomes 
watch out in Indiana. Wrench for rinse, used 
in the States contiguous to the Ohio, is rense 
in New England. Critter for horse is still 
heard in parts of rural Indiana, which derived 
population through Kentucky, where the same 
usage is noted. Fruit, as applied to stewed 
apples (apple sauce) only, is a curious limi- 
tation of the noun, heard among old-fashioned 
people of Southern origin in Indiana. Some 
place for somewhere is not chargeable to Indi- 
ana alone, but this and the phrases want on 
and want off seem to be used chiefly in the 

1 D before i or u does not become/ in cultivated usage any- 
where at the west. Personally, I have never heard Injiana 
within the State; but I have heard it from a Bostonian, a native 
of Maine, who had never lived outside of New England. 



58 THE HOOSIERS 

West Central States, and they belong to the 
borderland between slang and dialect. It 
would seem a far cry from the Hoosier speech 
to the classic Greek, and yet Dr. H. W. Taylor 
has pursued this line of philological inquiry 
with astonishing results, tracing an analogy 
of sound and sense most ingeniously between 
Greek terms and words found in the American 
dialects.^ 

In the speech of the illiterate, there is usu- 
ally something of rhythm and cadence. All 
slang shares a feeling for the balance and 
nice adjustment of words, and slang phrases 
are rarely clumsy. The cry of a boy calling 
his mate has its peculiar crescendo, and ped- 
lers the world over run the scale of human 
expression in pursuit of odd effects. The 
drawl of the Southerner and Southwesterner is 
not unmusical, though it may try the patience 
of the stranger. Even cultivated Indianians, 
particularly those of Southern antecedents, 
have the habit of clinging to their words; 
they do not bite them off sharply. G per- 
forms its office as final consonant in ing under 

1 "Souvenir of the Western Association of Writers," 1891. 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 59 

many disadvantages ; and it was long ignored, 
though the school teachers have struggled 
nobly to restore it. The blending of words, 
which begins with childhood, is often carried 
into maturity by the Indianian ; thus by a 
lazy elision " did you ever " is combined in 
jever^ and "where did you get" becomes 
wherjuget. Ju is, in fact, usual in the Ohio 
Valley. The history of the Italian a in 
this country is in itself interesting. In New 
England and in Virginia it finds recognition, 
whereas in the intermediate region the nar- 
rower sound of the vowel prevails; and like- 
wise the softening of r is noted in New 
England and among the Virginians and other 
Southerners, while in the intermediate terri- 
tory and at the West r receives its full sound. 
The shrill nasal tone is still marked in the 
back country folk of New England, while the 
Southern and Southwestern farmer's speech 
is fuller and more open-mouthed. Whether 
climatic influences have been potent in such 
matters remains a matter of speculation, but 
such theories are to be received with caution. 
It is unfortunate that there are so few trust- 



6o 



THE HOOSIERS 



worthy records of the early Southwestern 
speech, and that first and last bad grammar, 
reckless spelling, and the indiscriminate dis- 
tribution of the printer's apostrophe by writ- 
ers who had no real knowledge to guide them, 
have served to create an erroneous impression 
of the illiteracy of the Indianians and their 
neighbors. It is likely that during the next 
quarter of a century the continued fusion of 
the various elements of Western population 
will create a dead level of speech, approximat- 
ing accuracy, so that in a typical American 
State like Indiana local usages will disappear, 
and the only oddities discernible will be those 
of the well-nigh universal slang, which even 
now reach Colorado and California almost as 
soon as they are known at the Atlantic sea- 
board. At the South and in New England, 
where there is less mingling of elements, the 
old usages will probably endure much longer; 
and it is a fair assumption that in the Missis- 
sippi Valley and in the Trans-Missouri country, 
a normal American speech free of local idio- 
syncrasies will appear first. Our keen sense 
of humor and our love of the conveniences 



THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT 6 1 

of Speech are likely to continue to be national 
traits, leading to the creation and adoption of 
slang from time to time; but where a people 
imply quotation marks in all their lapses from 
propriety, they anticipate and destroy criticism. 
After all, there is nothing reprehensible in 
dialect, as we loosely use the word, or even 
in slang. Flexibility is necessary to the liv- 
ing language ; and the word-hunter who really 
delights in his avocation, and is not limited in 
his researches to the remoter fields of classi- 
cal philology, hearing in his daily walks and 
in the tranquil talk at peaceful inns the pun- 
gent or pictorial word that no lexicographer 
has yet detected, knows a joy that is greater 
than that of fly fishing or butterfly hunting. 
" No language," writes Lowell, '* after it has 
faded into diction, none that cannot suck up 
the feeding juices secreted for it in the rich 
mother-earth of common folk, can bring forth 
a sound and lusty book. True vigor and 
heartiness of phrase do not pass from page 
to page, but from man to man, where the 
brain is kindled and the lips suppled by down- 
right living interests, and by passion in its 



62 THE HOOSIERS 

very throe." He continues : " Language is 
the soil of thought, and our own especially 
is a rich leaf-mould, the slow deposit of ages, 
the shed foliage of feeling, fancy, and imagi- 
nation, which has suffered an earth change, 
that the vocal forest, as Howell called it, may 
clothe itself anew with living green." And this 
suggests Horace's words, in " Ars Poetica " : — 

" Ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos, 
Prima cadunt ; ita verborum vetus interit actas, 
Et juvenum ritu fiorent modo nata vigentque." 

As the leaves have fallen through a century 
in the Wabash country, they have buried words 
that will never reappear ; and the change will 
continue, old words vanishing and new ones 
taking their places, so long as tradition and 
heredity yield to the schoolmaster, that ruthless 
forester who grafts and trims to make all trees 
uniform. 



CHAPTER III 

BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 

In his address to the annual council of the 
Protestant Episcopal diocese of Indiana in 1863, 
Bishop Upfold spoke with much vigor against 
the use of flowers in the decoration of churches, 
and said : — 

" There is no sound principle, no true doctrine involved 
in the practice. It is all poetry, and the very romance 
of poetry, the conception of romantic and imaginative 
minds, dictated less by religious sentiment than by a fond- 
ness for show and gaudy display. Instead of the decora- 
tion concentrating the attention devoutly on the great and 
glorious fact which flowers are erroneously supposed to 
symbolize, it is far more likely to divert it, and impair the 
true spiritual emotions and impressions, which the com- 
memorative services of the day (Easter) are destined to 
awaken and deepen. . . . The practice will not be 
allowed in this diocese ; and I now declare and desire 
it may be distinctly understood and remembered, — 
and I may as well say it, because I mean to do it — that I 
will not visit or officiate in any parish, to administer con- 
firmation, or perform any other office on Easter Sunday, 
or on any other occasion, where this floral display is 
attempted." 

63 



64 THE HOOSIERS 

Bishop Upfold greatly modified his views 
before his death, in 1872; but this declara- 
tion is expressive of the general religious 
attitude of the earher Indianians ; it w^ Protes- 
tant, intensely Protestant. The religious phe- 
nomena observable in the State are not complex 
and are readily explained. The early French 
were, of course, Roman Catholics, and their 
first priests were of the heroic type that had its 
highest expression in Marquette and Joliet, and 
hardly less notably in Father Sorin of the Order 
of the Holy Cross, who founded, in Northern 
Indiana, Notre Dame University, and lived to 
see it one of the great Catholic schools of the 
continent. But the prevalent religious ideas 
of the Hoosiers were not inherited from the 
early French settlers. North Carolina contrib- 
uted members of the Society of Friends to the 
new territory, and Virginia, Kentucky, and 
Pennsylvania sent Methodists, Presbyterians, and 
Baptists, members of the sect estabHshed by 
Alexander Campbell, and German Lutherans. 
Episcopalians were few among the first Indiana 
colonists. The diocese of Indiana was created 
in 1838, and many earnest men have given their 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 6$ 

labor to its service first and last ; but the slow- 
progress of the Episcopal Church in the common- 
wealth has been due to conditions antedating the 
settlement of the Ohio Valley, running back, 
indeed, to the efforts of James I. to establish 
Scotch and English colonies in Ireland, the most 
turbulent part of his kingdom, and thus forming 
the base for a migration to America that was 
to color the life and thought of a vast area of 
new soil. As so large a proportion of the 
pioneers had rejected apostolic succession in 
the Old World, they saw no reason for accept- 
ing it in the Western wilderness. The rugged 
apostles of Methodism, and the less rugged 
but equally diligent and earnest preachers of 
Presbyterianism, were leaders in the strenuous 
religious labors of the early years of the cen- 
tury. The advance guard of these two religious 
bodies did not always dwell together in unity ; 
in educational work, for example, envy, hatred, 
and malice were sometimes awakened. The 
Rev. F. C. Holliday, writing in 1872,^ com- 
plained of the self-complacency with which the 
leading Presbyterians at the West had assumed 

1 " Indiana Methodism," p. 317. 



66 THE HOOSIERS 

authority in educational matters, and " the quiet 
unscrupulousness with which they seized upon 
the trust funds of the States for school purposes, 
and made these schools as strictly denomina- 
tional as though the funds had been exclusively 
contributed by members of their own com- 
munion." It is true that Presbyterians con- 
trolled the State University in its early years, 
but this was due to their zeal in education 
and to the exceptional fitness of many Presby- 
terian clergymen for teaching. Princeton ex- 
tended a friendly hand to the Presbyterians who 
were struggling in the new State, and sent, among 
others, the Rev. George Bush (i 796-1 859), who 
reached Indianapolis in 1824, and two years 
later shocked his congregation in the malarious 
village by denying that there was any authority 
of Scripture for the Presbyterian form of church 
government.^ His views became increasingly 
radical and in 1829 he left Indiana, accepted the 
chair of Hebrew and Oriental Literature in the 
University of the City of New York, and be- 
came a Swedenborgian. He was a life-long 
student and a writer of recognized ability. 

1 Edson's ** Early Indiana Presbyterianism," p. 171. 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 6j 

The Baptists organized the first Protestant 
church in Indiana in 1798. The Methodists 
formed a society in 1803, and in 1805 Peter 
Cartwright, one of the great pioneer Metho- 
dist evangelists, was at work in the State. 
The oldest Presbyterian society was formed 
in 1806, near Vincennes, then the capital, and 
William Henry Harrison, the governor, who 
had married a Presbyterian wife, was num- 
bered among its parishioners.^ The very nature 
of the pioneer life compelled the simplest of 
religious as well as of social observances. 
The meeting-houses were of logs, and the 
ministers were often tillers of the soil. One 
of the early Presbyterian clergymen aided the 
support of his family by farming, writing the 
deeds, wills, and other formal papers of his 
neighbors, by teaching singing, and by making 
shoes, and from all these sources of labor, 
including his pay as minister, he averaged 
only $%o a year for a period of sixteen 
years. Father (the Rev. James) Havens, 
one of the famous apostles of Methodism, 

1 Evans's " Pioneer Preachers," p. 43 ; Edson's " Early Indi- 
ana Presbyterianism," p. 40. 



6S THE HOOSIERS 

who, in 1824, rode what was known as the 
Connersville circuit, embracing several county 
seats, received $$6.06^ for his year's services. 
This does not indicate indifference among the 
scattered flock, but a lack of actual money. 
Instances are reported of men splitting rails 
or working in the harvest field at fifty cents 
a day in order to aid their ministers. Meet- 
ings were held in wayside cabins, in which 
the near neighbors gathered, and after the 
service the housewife prepared a meal for the 
clerical guest, and for those of the little con- 
gregation who remained. The ministers of 
the day were not always profound scholars, 
but they were light-bearers, who went ahead 
of the schoolmasters, communicating to scores 
of the youth of the new land an interest in 
the world of men and books. It has been 
said that three-fourths of the early students 
of Asbury (DePauw) University came from 
homes that were visited by the itinerant 
Methodist preachers.^ 

Ministers were required to be extemporane- 
ous speakers, and they often indulged in joint 

^ Goodwin's " Heroic Women of Indiana Methodism," p. 9. 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 69 

debates that aroused the greatest interest. 
These contests were markedly frequent dur- 
ing the period in which the " Campbellite " 
movement gathered force and began to at- 
tract members of the older religious societies. 
Lay discussion was common, and the free 
interpretation of the Bible urged by the 
Campbellites encouraged it. " Revivals " and 
camp-meetings were conducted frequently, and 
were often attended with great excitement. 
During the first quarter of the century reli- 
gious enthusiasm manifested itself with an ex- 
cess and abandon that were unknown in politics. 
** Father" was often prefixed to the names of 
the venerable pioneer ministers as a mark of 
affection, and in recognition of long service. 
This was not unusual among the Methodists, 
and even the Presbyterians occasionally be- 
stowed the term on some of their old and 
worn missionaries of the early days. Many 
of these men lived until late in the century, 
and saw the theology of their young manhood 
altered or superseded, and amid new men 
and new manners became almost strangers in 
the land they had first known as a wilderness^ 



70 THE HOOSIERS 

Great care had been taken to assure to the 
Northwest religious liberty and free schools. 
The ordinance of 1787 touched directly on 
the questions of religion and education in the 
Northwest Territory. " No person," it de- 
clared, " demeaning himself in a peaceable, 
orderly manner shall ever be molested on 
account of his mode of worship or religious 
sentiments in the said territory ; " and " reli- 
gion, morality and knowledge being necessary 
to good government and the happiness of 
mankind, schools and the means of education 
shall be forever encouraged." The ordinance 
has clearly been one of the great guiding 
influences of the nation. It prepared the way 
in the Ohio Valley for the attitude of the 
people toward slavery ; and its assurance of 
religious freedom and friendliness to learning 
brought to the new territory the benefit of 
the experience of those who had striven for 
such liberties and advantages in the seaboard 
colonies. The history of civilization in Indiana 
may be said to date from its passage. When, 
in 1804, Congress provided for the disposal 
of public lands in the districts of Detroit, 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 71 

Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, the act carried with 
it a reservation of the sixteenth section in 
each township for the support of schools, and 
also an entire township in each land district 
for the use of a seminary of learning; and 
later, the act of 18 16 that raised Indiana 
Territory to statehood, provided *' that one 
entire township, which shall be designated by 
the President of the United States, in addi- 
tion to the one heretofore reserved for that 
purpose, shall be reserved for the use of a 
seminary of learning, to be appropriated solely 
to the use of such seminary." Under the first 
law Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, 
selected a township in Gibson County ; and, 
following further the direction of Congress, 
Governor Harrison approved, in i8c6, an act 
of the territorial legislature, incorporating Vin- 
cennes University, which was not, however, 
fully open until 18 10. The territorial legis- 
lators believed that it would serve a good 
purpose to admit Indian youth to the privi- 
leges of the school, and the law enjoined the 
trustees "to use their utmost endeavors to 
induce the said aborigines to send their chil- 



72 



THE HOOSIERS 



dren to the University for education, who, 
when sent, shall be maintained, clothed, and 
educated at the expense of said institution." ^ 
Only one Indian ever availed himself of this 
offer. In 1822 a law was enacted calling for 
the sale of the Gibson County lands and the 
use of the proceeds for the State seminary 
already planned at Bloomington. Thus the 
State boldly confiscated the fief of one insti- 
tution and turned it over to another — an 
act that led to long litigation; and though 
Vincennes University was partially successful 
in the courts, its revenue was curtailed and per- 
manent injury resulted. It continues, however, 
in spite of reverses a lively member of the com- 
pany of Indiana schools of the preparatory type. 
Under the act of 18 16 President Monroe 
designated Perry Township, in the county 
which was named for him when, in 18 18, 
Orange County was divided.^ The selection 
of the " seminary township " became of great 
importance, for it determined not merely the 
location of the contemplated seminary, but of 

1 Woodburn's " Higher Education in Indiana," p. 31. 

2 Woodburn, p. 75. 



BRINGERS OF THE 1.IGHT 73 

the State University, into which it grew. 
Efforts have been made repeatedly to remove 
the institution from Bloomington, the town 
that rose about it ; but they have been unavail- 
ing. The site chosen by President Monroe, 
as it was impossible for him to foresee, was 
not to remain the most fortunate in point 
of convenience and accessibility; but Monroe 
County has clung tenaciously to the honor 
conferred upon her, and seems destined to 
carry her dignity through the twentieth cen- 
tury. The first principal of the seminary was 
Baynard Rush Hall (i 798-1 865), the son of 
a Philadelphia physician. He was a graduate 
of Union College and of Princeton Theo- 
logical Seminary. He was not only an early 
and valuable teacher, but a pioneer author. 
One of his books " The New Purchase ; or 
Seven and a Half Years in the Far West" 
contains a vast amount of information touch- 
ing pioneer customs ; and while it is not always 
wholly good-natured, it is written in the main 
with spirit and humor.^ He declared his belief 

1 In Dr. Hall's narrative " Woodville," " Spiceburg," " Sugar- 
town," " Sproutsburg," and " Timberopolis " are respectively 



74 THE HOOSIERS 

that he was " the very first man since the 
creation of the world that read Greek in 
the New Purchase " ; which is extravagant, as 
many of the earher Protestant ministers were 
doubtless learned in the languages, even if 
the distinction of which he boasted did not 
belong to some Roman Catholic missionary. 
Ten boys and young men were all that were 
admitted to the new seminary when it opened, 
May I, 1824. The standards of admission 
seemed wholly novel and unnecessary. " Daddy 
says he doesn't see no sort a use in the high 
larn'd things, and he wants me to larn Inglish 
only, and book-keepin', and surveyin', so as 
to 'tend store and run a line," was the tone 
of protest heard from many applicants, as 
reported by Hall in the *' New Purchase." 
Local politicians, viewing the new school as 
something exclusive and aristocratic, declared 
that " it was a right smart chance better to 
have no college nohow, if all folks hadn't 

Bloomington, Spencer, Crawfordsville, Lafayette, and Indian- 
apolis. The author assumes the names " Carlton " and *' Mr. 
Clarence." "Cutswell" became Governor Whitcomb; "The 
Rev. James Hilsbury " is the Rev. Isaac Reed ; " Dr. Bloduplex " 
is Dr. "Wiley, and " Dr. Shrub " is the Rev. George Bush. 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 75 

equal right to larn what they most liked best." 
Hall was the sole teacher employed for the 
first three years, and during this period the 
only branches taught were Greek and Latin. ^ 
While he thus filled all the offices of the 
seminary in the woods, he organized his hand- 
ful of students into a literary society, which 
he called the Henodelphisterian, and for which 
he made the rule that members should drop 
their proper appellations while in the academic 
shades and assume Greek or Latin names. 
"Thus," says Judge Banta, in his reminis- 
cences, ''every member of the society was an 
Ajax, a Pericles, a Timoleon." Hall's salary 
at this time was two hundred and fifty dollars 
a year, and there is ground for the suspicion 
that he compensated himself for deficiencies 
of income by the free indulgence of his sense 
of humor. As the young gentlemen of the 
Henodelphisterian were occupied out of school 
hours in wood-chopping and swine-herding, the 
joke was rather broad. Additional instruction 
was demanded in the third year, and a teacher 
of mathematics was employed. The seminary 

1 Banta's " History of Indiana University, " p. 44. 



"JQ THE HOOSIERS 

became the State University in 1838, and 
among the first trustees were David Wallace, 
Governor William Hendricks, Jesse L. Holman, 
Robert Dale Owen, and Richard W. Thomp- 
son, all of whom were otherwise factors in 
the early history of the State, and in several 
cases members of families distinguished in 
subsequent generations. The University's in- 
fluence in the State has been inestimable. 
It has usually been fortunate in its adminis- 
trators, and it has more and more grown to 
be the centre of agencies related to the better 
life and advancement of the commonwealth. 
After leaving Indiana, in 183 1, Hall taught 
academies at Bordentown and Trenton, New 
Jersey, at Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, New 
York, and in 1852 he became principal of Park 
Institute, Brooklyn. He received the degree 
of A.M. from Princeton and of D.D. from 
Rutgers College. 

So early as 1793 W. Rivet, a French mission- 
ary, *' a polite, well-educated, and liberal-minded 
enthusiast, banished to this country by the 
French Revolution," had conducted a school 
successfully at Vincennes. A system of county 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 'JJ 

seminaries was introduced early in the nine- 
teenth century, and such schools were organized 
in about half of the counties ; and between 1825 
and 1850 seventy-three private and incorporated 
schools were opened, traces of which remain. 
These were known sometimes by the name of 
the founder, or were identified with the name 
of the town in which they were situated. The 
democratic idea that secondary and higher edu- 
cation could not properly be provided by the 
State found early and wide acceptance. It 
was believed that the obligation of higher educa- 
tion should be undertaken by private enterprise 
and by religious organizations ; and out of 
this spirit came a group of seminaries, similar 
to those of the counties, and representing the 
several churches that had established outposts 
on the frontier. Many of these grew into 
colleges. Hanover and Wabash colleges thus 
began under Presbyterian auspices, DePauw 
(Asbury) University under the Methodists, and 
Franklin College under the Baptists ; and while 
their beginnings were not strictly in the semi- 
nary, Notre Dame, a Catholic university, and 
Earlham College, an institution of high char- 



78 THE HOOSIERS 

acter allied to the Society of Friends, were of 
like origin. Late in the period during which 
the seminaries flourished there rose a number 
of schools for women, of the academic grade, 
and all of them private or denominational. 

Institutions for higher education often precede 
schools for primary and intermediate training ; 
and in Indiana care had been taken to provide 
seminaries and colleges before the important 
matter of establishing a common school system 
had received intelligent attention. David Starr 
Jordan, long identified with education in In- 
diana, has remarked that "the growth in edu- 
cational systems is from above downwards. In 
historical sequence Oxford must precede Rugby, 
and the German University must come before 
the gymnasium." Nearly half a century after 
the organization of the first territorial govern- 
ment, no system of common schools had been 
perfected in Indiana. Efforts had been made 
and the subject had not been wholly overlooked 
by the lawmakers, but a prejudice existed in the 
minds of many against free schools as undemo- 
cratic. The principle that enlightenment must 
be a condition precedent to the intelligent exer- 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 79 

cise of citizenship was not grasped by the popu- 
lace ; and as a result of inattention the Hoosier, 
as Eggleston's schoolmaster found him, was ap- 
pearing on the scene. And yet, in 1837, while 
this type was increasing, a member of the legis- 
lature declared, during the discussion of a pro- 
posed school tax, that " When I die I want my 
epitaph written, 'Here lies an enemy to free 
schools.' " ^ 

But while many enemies of common school 
education were blocking the way, an unheralded 
champion was to appear, whose identity was not 
generally known for several years after he took 
the field, and whose services entitle him to first 
place among all who have striven for the ad- 
vancement of learning in Indiana. This was 
Caleb Mills, a native of New Hampshire (1806) 
and a graduate of Dartmouth (1828) and of 
Andover Theological Seminary (1833). ^^ 
1 83 1 he had made a tour of the Southwest in 
the interest of Sunday-schools, and the social 
and intellectual conditions that he found had 
deeply impressed him. It was a kind provi- 
dence that led him back to Indiana in 1833, and 

1 Boone's " History of Education in Indiana," p. 87. 



So THE HOOSIERS 

that gave to his adopted State the benefit of his 
sympathy, intelligence, and spirit to the end of 
his life. Among his classmates at Dartmouth 
were Milo Parker Jewett, who helped to mould 
the common school system of Ohio, and later 
became the first president of Vassar College, 
and Edmund O. Hovey, associated with Mills 
as a founder of Wabash College, and long a 
member of its faculty. Others of his Indiana 
contemporaries may have appreciated the grav- 
ity of the situation as fully as he, but it was left 
for Mills to sound the alarm and lead the charge. 
In the first year after he entered the State it 
was averred by a reputable witness that " only 
about one child in eight between five and fifteen 
years is able to read." Dr. Joseph F. Tuttle, 
the honored president of Wabash College for 
nearly a third of a century, described the con- 
dition of affairs in these words : — 

"In 1840 there were 273,784 children in the State of 
school age, of whom only 48,180 attended the common 
schools. One-seventh of the adult population could not 
read, and a large proportion of those who could read did 
so imperfectly. In spite of the constitutional provision of 
the State and the famous ' sixteenth section,' the common 
schools of Indiana were in bad condition. As late as 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 8 1 

1846 the State rated lowest among the free States as to 
its popular intelligence and means of popular education. 
Even the capital of the State did not have a free school 
until 1853, and then one was kept open only two months."^ 

The census of 1840 showed the illiteracy of 
Indiana to be 14.32 per cent. The return 
made by Illinois at this time was but little 
better, while Ohio, on the eastern boundary, 
showed only 5.54 per cent of illiterates. Omit- 
ting Illinois and Indiana, the illiteracy of the 
Northern States was only one in forty ; in Illi- 
nois and Indiana it was one in seven. In 
twenty-two counties of Indiana the average 
illiteracy was more than 26.5 per cent. Mont- 
gomery County, the home of Wabash College, 
returned at this time one-fifth of her adult 
population as illiterate, and Putnam County, 
the seat of Asbury College, returned one-sixth 
of her adult population as belonging to the 
same class.^ 

With a knowledge of these facts Mills made 
and published, in the winter of 1846, "An 
Address to the Legislature of Indiana," and 

1 " Caleb Mills and Indiana Common Schools," TuttU Mis- 
cellany, Vol. 38. 

* Boone's " Education in Indiana," p. 87. 
G 



82 THE HOOSIERS 

signed it " One of the People." The motto 
of this, as of his five succeeding addresses, 
was, " Read, discuss, and circulate." These 
were all written in a tone well calculated to 
interest and arouse. He handled his statistics 
skilfully, and made clear the alarming prog- 
ress of illiteracy in the State. He was as 
ready with suggestions as with criticisms, and 
his several papers show him to have been 
thoroughly informed as to the educational 
conditions existing in every part of the coun- 
try. He possessed great patience, and the 
series of pamphlets was marked throughout 
by good temper. He wrote in a deliberate 
manner, rarely showing haste or anxiety, as 
if confident of the impression that would be 
created by fair and judicial statement, and 
with faith in the ultimate triumph of his 
cause. 

In the year following the publication of 
his first address, a call was issued for a 
general meeting of educators to be held at 
Indianapolis. Among those interested in the 
movement were Ovid Butler, afterward the 
generous benefactor of Butler College, Henry 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 83 

Ward Beecher, pastor of the Second Presby- 
terian Church of Indianapolis, and John 
Coburn. A series of common school con- 
ventions followed, and was of great value in 
unifying sentiment. In the roll of those who 
were prominent in the first meeting appeared 
the names of Isaac Blackford, Oliver H. 
Smith, Calvin Fletcher, Jeremiah Sullivan, 
Richard W. Thompson, Solomon Meredith, 
and James Blake, who were of the saving 
remnant of their time. As a result of the 
agitation by Mills, the conventions of educators, 
and the ceaseless activity of many friends of 
education, the legislature of 1 847-1 848 author- 
ized the people to express their sentiments for 
or against a tax for the support of free schools, 
at the election to be held in the fall of 1848. 
This was a presidential year, and the Mexi- 
can War issues were discussed bitterly in Indi- 
ana and in the border States, where slavery 
lifted its head ominously; but the advocates 
of free schools forced their issue and evoked 
from the enemy a variety of objections which 
strike the sense curiously in these later years. 
Should the industrious be taxed to support the 



84 THE HOOSIERS 

indolent ? Should the people be made benevo- 
lent by law ? There was priestcraft in the 
scheme ; free schools were merely a bait ; the 
real object was the union of Church and State. 
Free schools would make education too com- 
mon, said some; but the fiercest antagonism 
came from the class for whom the friends of 
free schools were laboring — the wretchedly 
poor and ignorant.^ The vote on the school 
question was 13,000 less than the vote for 
president cast the same day, but free schools 
won, the affirmative vote being 78,523 ; the 
negative 6i,88y — a majority of 16,636 for 
free schools. The principal opposition to free 
schools was manifested in the counties lying 
south of a line drawn across the map along 
the southern boundary of Marion County, in 
which Indianapolis is situated. The northern 
counties gave a majority of 18,270 for free 
schools ; while the southern division, deriving 
its population chiefly from the South, gave a 
majority of 1634 against the proposition. Pro- 
fessor Boone has pointed out that '* notwith- 
standing the denser population having the 

1 Boone, supra, p. 104 e/ seq. 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 85 

older settlements, the established industries, 
and all of the colleges but one, the most in- 
sistent opposition to free schools came from 
the southern half of the State. The influence 
of local seminaries and colleges seems to have 
gone for nothing in the movement for free 
elementary schools." 

Mills returned imperturbably to the attack 
in a third message carefully scrutinizing this 
vote, and showing that of the thirty-one coun- 
ties voting negatively, twenty were below the 
general average of intelligence. The same 
measure and tolerance that characterized all 
his addresses show finely in this paper, in 
which he said : " Let the record of the affir- 
mative vote stand as a proof of the existence 
in our State of the spirit of 'j^. I rejoice 
that we have such indubitable evidence of it. 
I rejoice that we have been furnished with 
such proof that we are not the degenerate 
sons of noble fathers, but that we possess the 
spirit to rebuke selfishness wherever found, 
and however disguised — a kindred spirit to 
that which pledged life and fortune and sacred 
honor to the cause of national independence." 



86 THE HOOSIERS 

A new school law was framed by the legis- 
lature in 1 848-1 849, which legalized public 
taxation for schools and changed the existing 
system of school administration ; but the re- 
spective counties were to be free to adopt or 
reject the law as they might see fit, and it 
was only a via media, beyond which lay still 
much ground for the friends of education to 
conquer. At an election held in August, 1849, 
the counties exercised their privilege to pass 
on the new law. Friends and foes of free 
schools again conducted a heated campaign, 
both sides amplifying the arguments advanced 
in the former contest. The result was a major- 
ity in favor of the law of 15,767, a decrease 
from the majority given in the preceding 
election, though the two results may not fairly 
be compared, owing to local issues and ani- 
mosities. Fifty-nine counties voted for the 
law and thirty-one against it, and of those 
that rejected it twenty were in the southern 
half of the State. But the battle was more 
nearly won than the friends of education 
imagined. The constitutional convention that 
met in 1850 prescribed in the organic law of 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 87 

Indiana a foundation which subsequent legis- 
latures have built upon until a comprehensive 
system of schools, intelligently administered 
and adequately supported, is now the pride of 
the State.^ The friends of education were to 
meet with further trials and discouragements ; 
but the pioneer work in Indiana education 
closed when the new constitution had been 
ratified by the people. It is clear that any 
examination of the forces that raised Indiana 
into an enlightened community must compre- 
hend a knowledge of these early struggles, 
and that the showier attainments of later citi- 
zens cannot obscure for the sincere student 
the services of those who dared to stand for 
the cause of free schools in the day of their 
peril. 

Mills is an especially admirable and winning 
figure. He was hardly equalled for sagacity 

1 In 1899 Indiana's total school fund, exclusive of college 
endowment, was ^^10,31 2,000. The school revenue for that 
year, from all sources, was ^6,534,300. The census of 1890 
showed the per cent of illiterates (ten years of age and older) 
in Indiana to be 6.32 ; in Ohio 5.24 ; in Illinois 5.25 ; in 
Michigan 5.92. In Massachusetts it was 6.22 ; in New York 
5.53 ; in New Jersey 6.50 ; in Pennsylvania 6.78. 



88 THE HOOSIERS 

and sua\'ity among his contemporaries, and he 
brought to bear upon his great task a stead- 
fastness and quiet energy that no defeat could 
overcome. The State recognized his abilities 
and rewarded his services by confiding to him 
the office of State superintendent of public 
instruction, of which he was the second in- 
cumbent. He was deeply though sanely patri- 
otic, and during the Civil War his zeal for the 
Union cause was so marked that one of his 
associates pronounced him the best recruiting 
officer in Indiana. He belonged to Wabash 
College, and continued in its faculty until the 
end of his long life (October 17, 1879), giv- 
ing his last years, with characteristic unselfish- 
ness and devotion, to the organization of the 
college library. 

The early Hoosier school-teachers were often 
poorly trained, and sometimes were adventurers 
from England, Scotland, or Ireland. Occasion- 
ally they were intemperate, and frequently they 
were eccentric characters, whose vagaries made 
them ridiculous before their pupils; but there 
were competent instructors among them. One 
of the most charming figures in the history of 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 89 

cultivation in Indiana is Mrs. Julia L. Dumont 
(1794-18 5 7), who was born in Ohio, but for 
forty-three years resided at Vevay, in Switzer- 
land County. Among all the light-bringers 
of the first half of the century in the Hoosier 
country Mrs. Dumont was one of the most 
distinguished ; and she was easily the woman 
of most varied accomplishment in the Indiana 
of her day. She possessed an instinct for 
teaching, and Dr. Eggleston remembers that 
after she was sixty a schoolroom was built for 
her beside her husband's house, and that she 
taught the Vevay High School in her old age, 
when no properly qualified teacher appeared 
to take charge of it. Dr. Eggleston draws her 
portrait from memory : — 

" I can see the wonderful old lady now, as she was then, 
with her cape pinned awry, rocking her splint-bottom 
chair nervously while she talked, full of all manner of 
knowledge ; gifted with something very like eloquence in 
speech, abounding in afTection for her pupils and enthusi- 
asm in teaching, she moved us strangely. Being infatuated 
with her we became fanatic in our pursuit of knowledge, 
so that the school hours were not enough, and we had 
a Myceum' in the evening for reading 'compositions' 
and a club for the study of history. If a recitation be- 
came very interesting, the entire school would sometimes 



90 THE HOOSIERS 

be drawn into the discussion of the subject; all other 
lessons went to the wall ; books of reference were brought 
out of her library ; hours were consumed, and many a time 
the school session was prolonged until darkness forced 
us reluctantly to adjourn. Mrs. Dumont was the ideal of 
a teacher because she succeeded in forming character. 
She gave her pupils unstinted praise, not hypocritically, 
but because she lovingly saw the best in every one. We 
worked in the sunshine. A dull but industrious pupil 
was praised for diligence, a bright pupil for ability, a good 
one for general excellence. The dullards got more than 
their share, for, knov/ing how easily such an one is dis- 
heartened, Mrs. Dumont went out of her way to praise 
the first show of success in a slow scholar. She treated 
no two alike. She was full of all sorts of knack and tact, 
a person of infinite resource for calling out the human 
spirit."! 

Her natural grace and refinement gave to her 
discipline many a novel turn. She endeavored, 
and most happily succeeded in the attempt, to 
link the life of the time and place to " high 
thought and honorable deeds." Once, during 
her administration of the Vevay High School, 
a game of ball proved so absorbing that the 
boys were an hour late in reporting after the 
noon recess. They found the teacher calmly 

1 " Some Western Schoolmasters," Scribner's Magazine 
Vol. 17, p. 747- 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 91 

enthroned in her rocking-chair. She did not 
ask for an explanation, but spoke to them firmly 
of their indifference ; they had humiliated her, 
she said, before the whole town. No recesses 
would be allowed for a week, and an apol- 
ogy must be forthcoming the following day. 
The apology was duly submitted in writing. 
The remainder of the incident is best described 
in Dr. Eggleston's own words : — 

"The morning wore on without recess. The lessons were 
heard as usual. As the noon hour drew near, Mrs. Du- 
mont rose from her chair and went into the library. We 
all felt that something was going to happen. She came 
out with a copy of Shakespeare, which she opened at 
about the fifth scene of the fourth act of the second part 
of King Henry IV. Giving the book to my next neighbor 
and myself, she bade us read the scene, alternating with 
the change of the speaker. You remember the famous 
dialogue in the scene between the dying king and the 
prince who has prematurely taken the crown from the bed- 
side of the sleeping king. It was all wonderfully fresh to 
us and to our schoolmates, whose interest was divided be- 
tween the scene and a curiosity as to the use the teacher 
meant to make of it. At length the reader who took the 

king's part read : — 

" ' O, my son ! 

Heaven put it in thy mind to take it hence, 

That thou mightst win the more thy father's love, 

Pleading so wisely in excuse of it.' 



92 THE HOOSIERS 

Then she took the book and closed it. The application 
was evident to all, but she made us a touching little speech, 
full of affection, and afterward restored the recess."^ 

Mrs. Dumont was the first Hoosier to become 
known beyond the State through imaginative 
writing. In the little school of story-tellers and 
poets that flourished in the Ohio Valley in its 
early history, she was one of the chief figures. 
It had not then become the fashion to transcribe 
with fidelity our American local Hfe, and her 
prose sketches usually reflected nothing of the 
pioneer times. Her " Life Sketches from Com- 
mon Paths: A Series of American Tales," pub- 
lished at New York in 1856, is in the best 
manner of the day. Western is italicized in the 
preface of " Ashton Gray," the novelette which 
closes the volume, and the author evidently be- 
lieved that she was making a record of the life 
that lay about her ; but after all, the scene is 
laid in Ohio and not in Indiana, and a Western 
atmosphere is not discernible. The hero is 
the traditional hero of old romance, " whose 
innate delicacy was refinement, and whose 
generous impulses, chivalry," and whose *'ex- 

'^Scribner's^ supra. 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 93 

treme beauty " was a subject of comment from 
fair lips. It is not surprising that Annabel, 
** the dreamy, the impressible, the desolate 
Annabel," should have found Ashton "her 
beau-ideal of the distinctive characteristics of 
the fearless and self-sustained backwoodsman. 
. . . The untamed horse that tosses his mane 
in the green savannas could scarcely have 
moved with more freedom ; and the perfect 
development of limb and muscle evidently 
arose from the conscious vigor and habitual 
action of one accustomed to tread, not the gay 
saloon and prescribed walks of fashion, but 
the rough paths of danger, and the limitless 
range of voiceless solitudes." Ashton rescues 
three children from a burning cabin, using a 
ladder, in keeping with the best traditions, 
thus winning the heart of Annabel, who mar- 
ries him clandestinely, just before he is arrested 
for murder. He is acquitted by the testimony 
of his supposed father, and an old Indian ap- 
pears opportunely to confess that Ashton was 
really the son of Colonel Ainsworth, Annabel's 
guardian. 

There was a particular vocabulary that 



94 THE HOOSIERS 

belonged to this school of romance, and Mrs. 
Dumont employed it in all its copiousness. 
When rightly used it minimized the impor- 
tance of invention ; and it was better adapted 
to the portrayal of delicate and shrinking hero- 
ines and noble and handsome heroes, than to 
the rougher work of depicting action. A nice 
instinct was essential to its proper use, and 
no one of her generation wielded it with more 
grace and ease than Mrs. Dumont. Scott and 
Irving were the inspiration of the school in 
which she took so high a place ; and the verse 
which it produced so abundantly showed fre- 
quently the influence of Mrs. Hemans. Mrs. 
Dumont's technical skill was superior to that 
of her Western contemporaries ; but it is idle 
and ungracious to criticise the writings of one 
whose talents were so varied, and whose life 
was consecrated to good works. 

Her name inevitably suggests that of an- 
other teacher, her kinswoman, Miss Catharine 
Merrill (i 824-1900), who, with a wider field 
and larger opportunity, filled a similar place 
at Indianapolis for fifty years. She was born 
at Corydon, the old capital. Samuel Merrill, 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 95 

her father, was a cultivated man, a native of 
Vermont, and an early settler of Indianapolis. 
He subscribed to the English reviews and 
owned a large library, whose contents circu- 
lated freely among the pioneers. He had 
been educated at Dartmouth, and occasion- 
ally taught the higher branches, but he was 
a man of affairs, served the public in impor- 
tant offices, and was one of the ablest of the 
State's early financiers. The daughter taught 
English literature in Butler College for eighteen 
years, and during this time, and subsequently 
as a teacher of private classes, inculcated in 
the minds of three generations a discriminating 
taste for literature. Miss Merrill wrote (1869) 
*' The Soldier of Indiana," a valuable record 
of the State's participation in the war of the 
rebellion, which contains much biographical 
matter that is nowhere else collected. Mrs. 
Dumont and Miss Merrill afford delightful 
illustrations of the compelling force of per- 
sonality. In a sense one succeeded the other, 
and, though they labored in different fields, 
throughout a century they impressed upon 
the youth of the commonwealth the nobility 



96 THE HOOSIERS 

of character and the love of learning which 
they so happily combined in themselves. 

Samuel K. Hoshour is another sterling fig- 
ure in Indiana pedagogy. He was a native 
of Pennsylvania, and a minister, first in the 
Lutheran and afterward in the Disciples 
Church ; but he was a school-teacher first, 
last, and always, and taught many hundreds 
of the youth of Indiana. He was, in his later 
years, a resident of Indianapolis, and died there 
in 1883. Oliver P. Morton, Lew Wallace, and 
others of the distinguished men of the State sat 
under his teaching. In the eyes of two genera- 
tions he was the embodiment of learning and 
scholarship ; and he retained to the last some- 
thing of the austerity and exaggerated dignity 
of the old-fashioned school-teacher. He was, 
indeed, always the schoolmaster, and a pedant, 
though naYvely seeking to avoid the appear- 
ance of it. He was a linguist of wide repu- 
tation, and delighted in comparative philology. 
He had a fancy for unusual words, and 
took pleasure in illuminating their meanings 
from obscure origins. He wrote a book, prized 
by many of his old pupils, called ** Altisonant 



BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT 97 

Letters" (1840), which, as the title indicates, 
was written in high-sounding words. It is in 
the form of correspondence, and was devised 
as a kind of philological primer, to be "a 
stepping stone from the current everyday 
English to the Latin and Greek." The plan 
was not a bad one, and was in some respects 
a forerunner of the inductive methods of teach- 
ing languages that have since been popular. 



CHAPTER IV 

AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 

New Harmony, the scene of Robert Owen's 
experiment in socialism, lies in Posey County, 
in the far southwestern corner of Indiana. 
The village is without direct communication 
with the outer world, but may be approached 
by boat on the Wabash River, or by a branch 
railroad which ends abruptly at New Harmony 
after a rough course through wheat fields, 
which are, in spring and summer, a charming 
feature of the landscape of this region. George 
Rapp gave expression to his peculiar religious 
ideas in the community which he established 
there, and he sold his large estate to Owen, 
who began building on the foundations left 
by Rapp a social structure after plans of his 
own. Owen's ideas are not strikingly novel 
when taken in connection with the history of 
socialism ; but the movement carried to Indi- 
ana many distinguished persons, and the life 
98 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 99 

of subsequent generations in and about the 
village has, to this day, been colored by it. 

George Rapp came to the United States 
from Germany, in 1803, in search of a more 
tolerant home for the sect which he had 
founded. He purchased a tract of land in 
Butler County, Pennsylvania, and during the 
summer of 1804 six hundred of his followers, 
chiefly mechanics and laborers, joined him, 
and in the following year the community known 
as the Harmony Society was formally organ- 
ized. The members were banded together in 
a Christian brotherhood, and were orthodox 
in all essentials. Property was held in com- 
mon, and thought was directed away from 
mundane affairs to the second coming of the 
Lord, which Rapp beUeved to be imminent. 
The members experienced, in 1807, a great 
spiritual awakening, and one of its results was 
their acceptance of celibacy as an implied if 
not obhgatory tenet of the sect. 

In 1 8 14, the community sold the greater 
part of its holdings of real estate in Pennsyl- 
vania and purchased 30,000 acres of land in 
Indiana, of which Harmony became the centre. 



lOO THE HOOSIERS 

The following year the Rappites moved to the 
lower Wabash and continued in a new wil- 
derness their severe labors and ascetic prac- 
tices. They marked out a village in squares, 
with broad streets, and built houses in which 
beauty was sacrificed to stability. It is a trib- 
ute to their excellent workmanship that many 
of these structures are still in use, having 
survived two communistic experiments and 
falling at last to the incidental needs of 
a Western village. The Rappites had been 
annoyed during their sojourn in Pennsylvania 
by unsympathetic neighbors, and fearing sim- 
ilar experiences with the rough characters 
that roamed the Wabash country in those 
days, they deemed it wise to prepare a de- 
fence. They thereupon built, of brick and 
stone, a substantial fortress which was used as 
a granary. The walls were three feet thick 
and the loopholes were barred. The story 
that this building was connected with Rapp's 
house by an underground passage is authori- 
tatively denied at New Harmony. 

The Rappites had first used a frame building 
as a place of worship, but later they erected a 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM lOI 

large brick meeting-house, carving on the pedi- 
ment above the main door a wreath and a rose, 
the date, 1822, and the inscription, ** Mich IV, 
8 ; in Memory of the Harmony Society ; by 
George Rapp, 1805." The colonists were in- 
dustrious and thrifty. They cleared the land, 
planted vineyards, manufactured woollen and 
cotton goods and shoes, and found a ready 
market for all their products. The original 
population of the Pennsylvania settlement had 
been about six hundred persons ; and during 
the community's life in Indiana accessions of 
friends from Germany increased the number 
of members to between seven and eight hun- 
dred. In 1824 Rapp again decided to move, 
and appointed Richard Flower to negotiate a 
sale. Flower visited Scotland, sought Robert 
Owen, a manufacturer and social reformer, 
and sold him the Rappites' land for ^132,000. 
Subsequently there was an additional sale of 
live-stock, tools, and merchandise for ;^ 50,000, 
so that the total of Owen's original investment 
at New Harmony was ^182,000. The Rap- 
pites thereupon disappeared from Indiana, 
returning to Pennsylvania, where they estab- 



102 THE HOOSIERS 

lished a new settlement called Economy, and 
prospered greatly. 

Robert Owen was born in Wales, March 14, 
1 77 1. His father was a saddler, and Robert 
began his career under no favoring circum- 
stances. He became interested in cotton spin- 
ning, for which he showed genius and at which 
he made a fortune. He married the daughter 
of David Dale, the owner of extensive cotton 
mills at New Lanark, on the Clyde, became 
Dale's successor, and with growing fortune 
gave an increasing attention to social and 
political questions. He was a pioneer in the 
reform of factory abuses ; and in his own 
establishment at New Lanark he made prac- 
tical application of his theories. He visited 
the Continent, where he became acquainted 
with many persons of note, not the least of 
these being Pestalozzi and Fellenberg; he was 
much in London, usually in advocacy of some 
reform ; he acquired skill in writing and speak- 
ing, and taken altogether his biography gives 
the impression of a strong, zealous, and inde- 
fatigable nature. He was intense and uncom- 
promising, and, it must be confessed, sadly 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 103 

lacking in humor. He expected to find in 
the new world larger opportunities for the 
demonstration of his principles. The New 
Harmony incident illustrates a curious conflict 
between the ideal and the practical in Owen. 
It was quite like him to undertake the planting 
of a communistic settlement in America, and 
to invest his own money in it ; but a natural 
business caution checked his generous impulses, 
and while he extended a sweeping invitation to 
the industrious and well-disposed of all creeds 
to join him, he was in no haste to divide his 
property. 

Owen's lectures in the hall of the House of 
Representatives at Washington, February 5 
and March 27, 1825, before audiences com- 
posed of the famous men of the day, gave 
wide publicity to his views. He displayed a 
model of the ideal village which he proposed 
to found on the Wabash. The community 
buildings were to form a hollow square 1000 
feet long. The material needs of his proposed 
colony were all provided for in the buildings 
of his model village ; and he announced a 
comprehensive system of education in which 



104 THE HOOSIERS 

the young of the community should be led 
from the lowest to the highest branches. 
Owen had announced that "these new pro- 
ceedings," as he called his plans, were to take 
effect at New Harmony — he gave the pre- 
fix to Rapp's name for the place — in April, 
1826. He spent the summer of 1825 in 
England, but returned to America in the fall, 
reaching New York November 7. His hos- 
pitable invitation had awakened the interest 
of a large number of persons, ranging from 
sincere converts to eccentric and irresponsible 
vagabonds, drawn from all parts of the United 
States and Europe. What is known in New 
Harmony literature as " the boat load of 
knowledge " set out from Pittsburg in De- 
cember, 1825. About thirty people assembled 
on a keel boat, which they made comfortable 
for the voyage, and turned toward New Har- 
mony. The ice closed upon them near 
Beaver, and they did not reach their desti- 
nation until the middle of January. The 
passengers included Robert Owen and his 
sons, Robert Dale and William, William 
Maclure. Thomas Say, Charles A. Lesueur, 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM I05 

Achilles Fretageot and wife, Captain Don- 
ald Macdonald, Dr. Gerard Troost, Phique- 
pal d'Arusmont, and Stedman Whitwell, a 
London architect.^ Joseph Neef followed in 
the spring, and Frances Wright, of Nashoba 
fame, who married d'Arusmont, first appeared 
there in the second year of the community. 
Schoolcraft and Rafinesque were both visit- 
ors at New Harmony, but not during the life 
of the Owen community, though Rafinesque 
has been erroneously named as an original 
member. 

The strength of the keel boat's contribution 
to the community lay in special scientific 
knowledge ; and if Owen's inclination toward 
socialism had been increased by the success 
of Rapp's submissive peasants, he erred gravely 
in his own choice of followers. William Maclure 
( 1 763-1 840) was a wealthy Scotchman, who 
turned from a successful mercantile career to 
the natural sciences. He first visited the 
United States in the last years of the eigh- 
teenth century, and planned a geographical 

1 One of the passengers on " the boat load of knowledge," 
Victor Duclas, is still living (July, 1900) at New Harmony. 



I06 THE HOOSIERS 

survey of the whole country. He explored 
at his own expense a vast territory, and pre- 
pared maps showing the result of his investi- 
gations. He was a founder of the Academy 
of Natural Sciences, at Philadelphia, to which 
he gave generously of his fortune, and was its 
president for more than twenty years. His 
friend, Thomas Say (1787-1834), called "the 
father of American zoology," was also con- 
nected with the Academy in its formative 
years. The place of both is secure in the 
history of American science. Lesueur came to 
the United States from the West Indies. His 
scientific researches had included extensive in- 
vestigations in Australia, and he was an early, 
if not indeed the first, student of the Mound- 
builders' remains in Indiana. He was an artist 
of considerable merit, and some of his work 
may be seen in the New Harmony library. 
Troost ( 1 776-1 850) was a scientist of wide and 
exact knowledge, who went to Tennessee after 
the collapse of New Harmony, taught the 
sciences for many years in the University of 
Nashville, and was for eighteen years State 
geologist. Neef was a native of Alsace. He 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 107 

had been a teacher in Pestalozzi's school, in 
Switzerland, and met there his wife, who was 
educated under the direction of Madame Pesta- 
lozzi. They removed to Philadelphia immedi- 
ately after their marriage, and became acquainted 
with Maclure, who, like Owen, had been at- 
tracted by the Pestalozzi system, and who 
persuaded them to join the Owenites. Little 
is known of Macdonald, though there is a 
tradition at New Harmony that he returned to 
Scotland and inherited a title of nobility. 

Owen's followers moved into the houses 
that had been vacated by Rapp's colonists, 
and set about organizing the new community. 
On April 27 Owen addressed them in the Rapp- 
ite church, which had been preempted for sec- 
tarian uses and dedicated to liberal thought 
and free speech. He spoke with great enthusi- 
asm, declaring that he had come to introduce 
a new and enlightened state of society, ehmi- 
nate ignorance and selfishness, and remove all 
cause for contest between individuals ; but the 
change from the new to the old could not be 
accomplished in a day, and he called New 
Harmony a halfway house between the evils 



I08 THE HOOSIERS 

he complained of and the ideal. In May, the 
modus vivendi of a preliminary society was 
promulgated, as a means of preparation for 
the perfect community to which Owen looked 
forward. Negroes were excluded from mem- 
bership, though they might become " helpers," 
or they might form an independent community. 
Age and experience alone were to confer prece- 
dence. For the first year a committee to be 
appointed by the founder was to have charge 
of affairs, and later the society might elect 
three representatives of this council. Members 
were required to provide their own household 
effects, to accept houses assigned to them, and 
to render their best services to the community. 
They were to receive credit at the community 
store for their labor, which was to be appraised 
by the committee of management. Members 
might be expelled for cause, or they might 
voluntarily retire by giving a week's notice, 
receiving in merchandise any balance that 
remained to their credit. Persons wishing to 
live in the community as non-participants in 
its labors might do so by paying for the 
privilege, and the capital of any who cared to 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 109 

become investors would be received. American 
products were to have the preference in the 
purchase of supplies. The young were to be 
drilled in military tactics, to the end that they 
might be of service to their country in emergen- 
cies, until society had been reformed and war 
made unnecessary. 

Within six months nearly one thousand per- 
sons had gathered at New Harmony, and a 
considerable proportion of these seem to have 
been incapable, either through inexperience 
or disinclination, of aiding in the success of 
Owen's plans. Rapp's industries had cer- 
tainly not fallen into the hands of skilled or 
adaptable laborers. Many of the manufactories 
which he had made profitable were not oper- 
ated under the new regime, and less than a 
hundred farm laborers volunteered for service 
in carrying on the plantations. Plans for edu- 
cation and social pleasure were received more 
kindly than those requiring skilled labor. All 
children between two and twelve were placed 
in a separate house, and clothed, lodged, and 
educated at the public expense. The fall of 
1825 found 130 children so cared for, and 



no THE HOOSIERS 

there were also day and evening schools where 
old and young alike might receive elementary 
instruction. A band was organized to provide 
music, and Tuesday evenings were set apart 
for balls and Friday evenings for concerts. 
Wednesday evenings were reserved for the 
more serious business of discussing the pur- 
poses of the society. Military exercises, as 
proposed by Owen, were duly conducted, and 
companies of artillery and infantry were formed 
and drilled. 

The senior Owen was absent in Scotland 
during the summer and fall of 1825, but re- 
turned January 18, 1826, and was received 
with great cordiality. He expressed his satis- 
faction with the progress that had been made 
during his absence, and in a few days announced 
that he felt justified in suspending the pre- 
paratory stage and inaugurating full equality. 
A new constitution was adopted February 5, 
after careful consideration in town meetings. 
It provided for community of property and 
business and social cooperation. The mem- 
bers were to dwell together as one fainily, 
and no discrimination was to be shown on 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM III 

account of occupation. Similar houses were 
to be provided for all, and no differences in 
food or clothing were to be permitted. The 
community was to be divided into departments 
of Agriculture, Manufactures and Mechanics, 
Literature and Science, Domestic and General 
Economy, Education and Commerce. Super- 
intendents for these departments were to be 
chosen by an assembly consisting of all adult 
members of the community; but the individ- 
uals in the several departments might select 
their own foremen. A schism occurred before 
this constitution had been signed by the mem- 
bers of the preliminary society. The exact 
cause is not assigned in the Gazette, the offi- 
cial organ of the society, conducted by Robert 
Dale Owen, which announced, February 15, 
that a new community was about to be formed 
within two miles of the village "by some re- 
spectable families who were members of the 
preliminary society, but from conscientious 
motives have declined signing the new con- 
stitution." Two new communities were, in- 
deed, organized, one called Macluria and the 
other Feiba Peveli. This latter name was 



112 THE HOOSIERS 

coined after an intricate system of geographic 
cal nomenclature, invented by a member of the 
society, by which the latitude and longitude of 
any place could be represented. The sole di- 
rection of the community was intrusted to 
Robert Owen two weeks after the reorganiza- 
tion, the inference from this fact being that the 
separation of the two branches had eliminated 
those who were antagonistic to the founder. 
At the end of the first year the population 
was distributed about as follows : the original 
New Harmony settlement, 800; Macluria, 120; 
Feiba Peveli, 60 or 70. The relations be- 
tween Owen and the seceders were apparently 
friendly. In an address delivered at New 
Harmony, May 9, he spoke with satisfaction 
of the success of his undertaking, saying that 
his hopes had been surpassed, and mention- 
ing both Macluria and Feiba Peveli with ap- 
proval. At Macluria temporary cabins had 
been built and more land had been cultivated 
than was necessary to sustain the members. 
Spinning and weaving were practised by the 
women and children, who produced cloth in 
excess of their requirements. Feiba Peveli was 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM II3 

a farming and gardening community, reported 
by Owen to be doing well. 

At this time the first Rappite church was 
given up to carpentry and shoemaking. Boys 
received industrial training there and slept in 
the loft. The second and more pretentious 
edifice had become a town hall, used for 
lectures, open discussions, dances, and concerts. 
Rapp's former home — the best residence in 
the place — was occupied by Maclure, who had 
given ;^45,ooo to assist Owen in his enterprise. 
Owen lived at the tavern, which was conducted 
by the society. The rank and file were ac- 
commodated in four boarding-houses pending 
changes that would bring all together at a com- 
mon table. A uniform dress for the members 
had been adopted, but it was not generally 
worn. Wide trousers, buttoned over a short 
collarless jacket, were prescribed for the men ; 
the women wore a coat reaching to the knee, 
and pantalettes. Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Wei- 
mar, who visited New Harmony in the spring 
of 1826, and wrote a most entertaining account 
of the community, described the costume and 
remarked that the members who had already 



114 THE HOOSIERS 

donned it were of the higher social class, 
and that these did not, in the gatherings at 
the public hall, mingle with the ruder element. 
Previous conditions and employments were evi- 
dently remembered in the community, in spite 
of the founder's insistence that there should 
be no discrimination. Many in the settlement 
found the practical details of community life 
exceedingly irksome; and one, a Russian lady, 
confided to the German nobleman her disgust 
with New Harmony, stating that "some of 
the society were too low, and the table was be- 
low all criticism." 

The educational features of the community 
were, from all testimony, a, great failure and 
disappointment. It was one thing to assemble 
distinguished scientists, and quite another to 
organize them into an effective teaching corps. 
The school taught by d'Arusmont lasted but 
a short time, and Robert Dale Owen, who 
was himself a teacher in one of the commu- 
nity schools, while admitting the man's good 
qualities, described him as "a wrong-headed 
genius, whose extravagance and wilfulness and 
inordinate self-conceit destroyed his useful- 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM II5 

ness." Neef had been an officer under 
Napoleon, and his rough military habits had 
not been wholly corrected by his subsequent 
association with Pestalozzi. The Duke of Saxe- 
Weimar gives a lively picture of him, drilling 
his boy pupils in military tactics as he led 
them to the performance of certain labors in 
the village. Maclure, Say, and Troost did 
not engage actively in teaching. Paul Brown 
stated, in a pamphlet assailing the society, 
that he began teaching in the boarding-school 
in September, 1826; but from his own story 
Brown was chiefly employed with meditations 
on the evils of the place, and his manifesta- 
tions of temper argue against his value as 
a teacher. Madame Fretageot was associated 
with Neef, and the two had charge of the 
boarding-school. Madame Neef was not regu- 
larly employed as a teacher, but sometimes 
assisted her husband. 

Robert Owen's unfriendly attitude toward 
religion had awakened hostility in England 
before he came to the United States. Packard, 
one of his biographers, expresses no doubt as 
to Owen's disbehef in the inspiration of the^ 



U6 THE HOOSIERS 

Bible and in the divine origin of Christianity. 
Lloyd Jones, the writer of another life of Owen, 
seeks to mitigate the effect of some of the state- 
ments in Owen's '' New Moral World " ; but it 
is sufficiently clear that when he was at the 
height of his fame and usefulness in England, 
Owen estranged many of his most influential 
friends and admirers by his flings at religion, 
which were serious enough to arouse the wrath 
of an occasional heresy-hunting bishop. Sargent, 
the author of " Robert Owen and his Philos- 
ophy," says that Owen suffered for his rehgious 
opinions " neglect, hatred, contempt, calumny, 
and all the evils that follow the excommuni- 
cated man." In his '' Declaration of Mental 
Independence" at New Harmony, July 4, 1826, 
Owen inveighed against " a trinity of the most 
monstrous evils that could be combined to inflict 
mental and physical evil upon the whole race. 
I refer to private or individual property, absurd 
and irrational systems of rehgion, and marriage 
founded on individual property combined with 
some of these irrational systems of religion" 
— a statement that was somewhat advanced 
for the Wabash Valley of that period. He 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM II7 

seemed to ignore the spiritual element in man, 
though, according to Sargent, he expressed in 
his old age his belief that a Divine Providence 
had guided him through his long career; and 
late in life he became a convert to spiritualism. 
There is no evidence that Owen ever held loose 
ideas of the relations of the sexes, though such 
opinions were attributed to him. He believed 
that marriage should be founded on mutual 
sympathy and congeniality, and he wished the 
imagination to be excluded and judgment made 
the sole guide in such matters. This, like many 
of his teachings, seems equivocal ; but he be- 
lieved that where these prerequisites ceased to 
exist it should be possible to terminate a mar- 
riage. Owen and Maclure both believed fully 
in the equality of the sexes. New Harmony 
schools were co-educational, and women were 
admitted to all the councils of the society. It 
is not clear that they were always permitted to 
vote, though widows succeeded to the suffrages 
of their husbands. A woman's society was or- 
ganized, and is supposed to have been similar 
to literary clubs as now known, though there 
is but one reference to the organization in 



Il8 THE HOOSIERS 

the Gazette — a notice of the postponement 
of a meeting in November, 1825. 

Owen's refusal to make a formal transfer 
of his property to the community continued 
to be a cause of dissatisfaction. The founder 
spoke hopefully of the future, but he took care 
that his enthusiasm should not run away with 
his judgment, so he continued to hold his little 
principality in fee simple. When questioned as 
to his intentions in this particular, he replied, as 
officially reported in the Gazette of August 30, 
1826: "I shall be ready to form such a com- 
munity whenever you are ready for it. . . . 
But progress must be made in community edu- 
cation before all parties can be prepared for 
a community of common property." The as- 
sembly thereupon adopted a resolution that 
they meet three evenings in the week for com- 
munity education, but this was evidently re- 
garded by the members as a severe penalty to 
pay for the cause of socialism. Robert Dale 
Owen wrote that the meetings continued ''with 
gradually lessening numbers." 

Troubles came thick and fast in the fall 
of 1826. Several adventurers openly tried to 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM II9 

defraud Owen, and an era of suspicion began. 
A man named Taylor joined the community, 
at Owen's invitation, to take charge of the in- 
dustries, but after getting possession of a tract 
of land he started a distillery, greatly to the 
founder's annoyance. Brown describes with 
great particularity the unhappy condition that 
prevailed during the fall and winter of 1826. 
He complains that Owen was living in luxury 
at the tavern, while the laborers in the large 
boarding-houses fared badly. Although there 
were several professional gardeners in the com- 
m.unity, there was a lack of vegetables, and the 
necessities were doled out sparingly. Brown 
believed that the founder was trying to retrieve 
his fortunes, and he speaks of him as " willing 
to shift into the character of a retailer and tav- 
ern keeper." The Gazette was, in Brown's 
belief, the personal organ of Owen, whom he 
calls "the lord proprietor of the press"; but 
this may be merely the wail of the rejected, for 
Brown admits that his own contributions were 
repeatedly scorned, so that to gain publicity he 
was obliged to post them on the gateway of the 
educational society, taking them in at night for 



I2p THE HOOSIERS 

safety. He says that in spite of the balls and 
promenade concerts the people remained stran- 
gers, and he deplores the amount of time and 
candles wasted in these frivolities. As to the 
educational features of the place, Brown ex- 
presses his opinion that there was no other 
place in the United States where a like number 
of children in the same compass "were of so 
harsh, insolent, rash, boisterous, and barbarous 
dispositions." Brown deals drastically with the 
auditing department of the community. He 
intimates that when a debit balance appeared 
against a member on the books, credit was 
immediately stopped at the store. He gives 
the instance of a gardener named Gilbert, who 
was suddenly served with his discharge in De- 
cember, when his family were ill, because he 
was performing no labor and had fallen in 
arrears. Gilbert asked for an investigation, 
which was held, and the court found in his 
favor. 

Twenty heads of families were notified to 
quit February i, 1827; March 21 there was an 
exodus of about eighty persons, who took a 
steamboat for the upper Ohio, and March 28 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 121 

the Gazette contained an editorial admitting 
the failure of New Harmony, the central com- 
munity, but maintaining that the auxiliary socie- 
ties were successful. The reason assigned for 
the collapse was that " the members were too 
various in their feelings, and too dissimilar in 
their habits, to govern themselves harmoniously 
as one community." Owen delivered a farewell 
address to the citizens. May 26. He spoke with 
patient forbearance of the element that had 
joined the community merely to become a burden 
upon him ; but he was severe upon his associates 
who had undertaken the educational work of the 
society but had failed to organize such schools 
as he had expected. He had wished the chil- 
dren to be " educated in similar habits, disposi- 
tions, and feelings, and be brought up truly as 
members of one large family, without a single 
discordant feeling." If the schools had not 
proved ineffectual, he believed that even with 
the heterogeneous mass that had collected on 
his lands a successful society could have been 
founded. However, turning from these un- 
pleasant reflections, with characteristic optimism, 
he declared that "the social system is now 



122 THE HOOSIERS 

firmly established ; the natural and easy means 
of forming communities have been developed 
by your past experience. . . . New Harmony 
is now, therefore, literally surrounded by inde- 
pendent communities, and applications are made 
almost daily by persons who come from far and 
near to be permitted to establish themselves in 
a similar manner." The eight communities 
referred to were probably little more than 
tentative colonies, planted on Owen's lands 
under lease. There is no evidence that a 
community organization w^as maintained for 
any length of time at Macluria or Feiba Peveli 
after the collapse at New Harmony village, and of 
the remainder of the eight to which Owen re- 
ferred there is no further record. They van- 
ished with the others, and presently passed to 
individual owners or lessees. Brown summa- 
rizes the disappearance of communism and the 
return of the old order in these words : *' The 
greater part of the town was now resolved into 
individual lots ; a grocery was established op- 
posite the tavern ; painted sign boards began to 
be stuck up on the buildings, pointing out places 
of manufacture and trade ; a sort of wax figure 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 1 23 

and puppet show was opened at one of the 
boarding-houses, charging twenty-five cents for 
adults and twelve and a half for children; and 
everything went on in the old style." 

Owen's teachings and example led to other 
experiments in America besides those he per- 
sonally conducted on the Wabash ; but American 
sociahsm of the Owen period was most fully 
expressed at New Harmony. Owen's ardor for 
social reforms continued unabated. He visited 
Mexico shortly after the New Harmony failure, 
to secure a concession of land for further ex- 
periments. The negotiations failed, and he is 
next heard of at Cincinnati, in April, 1829, de- 
bating religious questions with Alexander Camp- 
bell. He did not appear in America again 
until the fall of 1844, when he spent a short 
time on his New Harmony lands, lectured in 
many cities, established friendly relations with 
Brisbane and other Fourierites, and, in the 
spring of 1845, visited Brook Farm. He was 
last at New Harmony in the fall of 1846. 

It could hardly be expected that a village 
which had been the home of two orders of exiles 
could descend at once to the commonplace, and 



124 THE HOOSIERS 

the subsequent history of New Harmony is not 
disappointing. Through many years scientists 
of distinction and radicals of all degrees visited 
the place ; Maclure made it his headquarters ; 
Say lived and died there ; the sons of Robert 
Owen became residents and gained honorable 
distinction in science and politics ; books that 
still have value were written and published in 
the village. Robert Dale Owen (1801-1 877) 
turned from communism to politics and litera- 
ture, and few citizens of Indiana have lived 
lives more useful or memorable. He was edu- 
cated at Hofwyl, under Fellenberg, and after a 
few years of commercial experience at New 
Lanark, he joined the New Harmony commu- 
nity. He shared, in large measure, his father's 
interests in social and economic matters, and 
after the fall of New Harmony he and Frances 
Wright conducted a radical paper called the 
Free Enquirer at New York. In 1833 he re- 
turned to New Harmony and was soon launched 
upon a brilliant career. He was elected a 
representative to the Indiana General Assem- 
bly and to the National Congress, and he was 
an influential and active member of the con- 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 1 25 

vention that revised the Indiana constitution. 
The Indiana laws granting independent prop- 
erty rights to women were largely due to his 
efforts, and he introduced in Congress, in 
December, 1845, the bill under which the 
Smithsonian Institute was organized. He was 
appointed charge d'affaires at Naples in 1853, 
and when the grade of the post was raised he 
was continued as minister until 1858. In 1863, 
he was chairman of a commission appointed by 
the Secretary of War to examine the condition of 
the freedmen. He had written to the President, 
urging emancipation before this step had been 
determined upon, and Secretary Chase said 
that Owen's letter to Lincoln had greatly in- 
fluenced the President to make his proclamation. 
Mr. Owen wrote often and well, and with a 
facility and force that gave him wide reputa- 
tion for learning and literary accomplishment. 
His books include " Pocahontas : A Dream " 
(1837); "Hints on Architecture "(1849); "Foot- 
prints on the Boundary of Another World" 
(1859); ''Beyond the Breakers: A Novel" 
(1870); ** Debatable Land Between this World 
and the Next" (1872); and "Threading my 



126 THE HOOSIERS 

Way" (1874). He became deeply interested 
in spiritualism, and two of his books, as the 
titles indicate, are devoted to this subject. He 
travelled much and knew many of the men 
and women eminent in the early years of the 
nineteenth century, including La Fayette and 
Mrs. Shelley. His daughter Rosamund married 
Laurence Oliphant. 

David Dale, another son of Robert (1807- 
1860), was educated at Hofwyl and Glasgow, 
and reached New Harmony in the year of the 
community's failure. He was employed by the 
Indiana legislature to make a geological sur- 
vey of the State, and in 1839 the general gov- 
ernment engaged him to examine Western 
mineral lands. He explored lUinois, Iowa, and 
Wisconsin under this appointment. Ten years 
later he made similar surveys in Minnesota. 
During all this time New Harmony was his 
home and headquarters, and the rendezvous of 
his associates, and his collections of specimens 
were assembled there. He was State geologist 
of Kentucky from L854 to 1857, and then turned 
to Arkansas, of which he made thorough geo- 
logical surveys. In 1859 he was appointed 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 1 27 

State geologist of Indiana, and held the office 
until his death. He was a skilled chemist and 
a doctor of medicine as well as a trained natural 
scientist and geologist. He knew the use of 
pencil and brush, and illustrated his reports 
with sketches that greatly enhanced their value. 
Military talent expressed itself in the Owen 
family in Richard, still another of Robert's sons 
(18 10-1890), who was also a graduate of Hof- 
wyl. He came to America and engaged in busi- 
ness until the Mexican War, in which he served 
as captain, and later assisted his brother, David 
Dale, in his surveys of the Northwest. He 
taught the natural sciences in the Military Insti- 
tute of Kentucky, and when it was merged in 
the University of Nashville he continued in the 
same capacity with the new institution. Mean- 
while he had, with the energy and ambition 
characteristic of his family, earned the degree 
of Doctor of Medicine, though he never prac- 
tised. He served in the Civil War as colonel 
of the Sixtieth Indiana Regiment, principally in 
the Southwest, and was once taken prisoner. 
After the war he taught in the University of 
Indiana for fifteen years, retiring finally to New 



128 THE HOOSIERS 

Harmony, where, in the old Rapp mansion, he 
continued his studies, writing constantly for the 
scientific periodicals. He married a daughter 
of Neef . William Owen, who had reached New 
Harmony in time to aid his brother, Robert 
Dale, in editing the Gazette, continued to live in 
Indiana, and became a successful financier. 
Descendants of Robert Owen still live at New 
Harmony, and the name is one to conjure with 
in all the lower Wabash Valley. 

The excellent work of the New Harmony 
press proves that good craftsmanship was 
encouraged and appreciated in the early days. 
The Gazette, and its successor, the Dissemina- 
tory are models of accurate and tasteful typog- 
raphy, and the books published from this 
isolated village are even more creditable. Say's 
''American Conchology" was wholly printed 
at New Harmony, the title page bearing date 
1830. Its copious illustrations are the work 
of New Harmony lithographers, and the tint- 
ing of the engravings, which was done by 
Mrs. Say, reproduces accurately the delicate 
shadings of the shells. Her colors are still 
fresh and true in copies of this work. Parts 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 1 29 

of Say's ''American Entomology," which he 
had begun at Philadelphia, were finished at 
New Harmony. Maclure was an industrious 
writer, and the imprint of the New Harmony 
press is found in two substantial volumes, one 
dated 183 1, the other 1837, in which he col- 
lected short essays on innumerable topics. 
Josiah Warren was for a time at least the 
New Harmony publisher, and Michaux's 
" North American Sylva " was reprinted by 
him from plates brought from Paris by Mac- 
lure, though the unbound sheets of the New 
Harmony edition were consumed by fire. 

Warren was a reformer as well as a publisher. 
He was connected with New Harmony for a 
short time in community days, but left, return- 
ing in 1842 to establish a ''time store." In the 
"time store" he sold merchandise to none who 
could not return the actual cash cost, plus a 
profit which must be paid in a "labor note." 
This form of currency represented a specified 
number of hours of labor, pledged by mechanics 
or others. When a customer entered his shop 
and began discussing a purchase, Warren 
started a clock which marked the amount of 



130 THE HOOSIERS 

time consumed in the sale : this was the basis 
for computing the merchant's profit. Warren 
could often be seen in the streets of New Har- 
mony with large amounts of labor currency. 
This medium of exchange required careful 
handUng, as some would appraise their labor 
too high, and now and then depreciation fol- 
lowed an over-issue by some careless or un- 
scrupulous individual. Warren conducted this 
enterprise for about two years, departing to 
carry the gospel of " equitable commerce," as 
he called it, elsewhere. 

In 1838 the Workingmen's Institute and 
Library was organized at Maclure's sugges- 
tion and with money that he contributed. 
Later, Dr. Edward Murphy generously gave 
to this association a handsome building, which 
contains the library, an art gallery, — largely 
Dr. Murphy's gift, — a hall, and museum. The 
building stands in a pretty park and is ideally 
adapted to its purposes. The library contains 
12,000 volumes, well selected and particularly 
rich in scientific works. It includes every avail- 
able book relating to American socialism, and 
many of the original New Harmony records 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 131 

are preserved there. Dr. Murphy has provided 
an endowment for it and for an annual course 
of lectures. The lecture course is greatly prized 
by the citizens, who have heard under its auspi- 
ces many of the learned men of the day. There 
was no church in the village for many years; 
indeed, with the passing of Rapp little attention 
was paid to religious matters at New Harmony 
until late in the century, and though there are 
Episcopal and Methodist organizations in the 
village now, the life of the people does not cen- 
tre about the churches as in most communities 
of the same size. An old citizen describes the 
attitude of the inhabitants toward religion as 
one of tolerance merely. Several branches of 
the Owen family are Episcopalians. Dancing 
as a feature of social life has survived from 
community times, and a first-of-May ball, fol- 
lowed by a dance for children, has long been 
fixed in the local calendar. 

Thus Robert Owen's brief experiment, fail- 
ing of his purpose, led to the founding of an 
American family whose members have shown 
unusual talents, creditable alike to their distin- 
guished progenitor and to the State which 



132 THE HOOSIERS 

became, by chance, their home. He failed to 
establish an asylum for the oppressed, as he 
had intended, but he was responsible for the 
impulse that made of his village a centre of 
scientific inquiry and the home of men of 
renown. It is impossible to separate the New 
Harmony of to-day from the village of the past. 
At every turn, the buildings of the Rappites 
and the traces of Owen's disciples suggest the 
old times ; and descendants of the Owens, 
Fretageots, Beales, Fauntleroys, Dransfields, 
Wheatcrofts, and many others dating back to 
community times, still live there. New Har- 
mony is a pleasant place in May and June, 
when the great lines of maples in the broad 
streets are at their best, and all the quiet valley 
is fresh and green. It invites by its air of 
antiquity and peace ; the sheltered life is still 
possible there. In the present, it is the ideal 
Western village ; in its memories it marks the 
first high tide of cultivation at the West. 



CHAPTER V 

THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 

The rural type in Indiana has found notable 
interpretation at the hands of two writers who, 
working independently of each other and at 
different periods, have made records of great 
social and literary value and interest. As 
already indicated, country life at the West and 
Southwest has not varied widely in different 
communities. The same social conditions and 
peculiarities of speech have been observable in 
many regions deriving population from com- 
mon sources; but the type found in the Ohio 
Valley was best defined in Indiana, and it has 
gained its greatest fame through the interpre- 
tations of Edward Eggleston and James Whit- 
comb Riley. Their outlook on life has been 
wholly different, and their literary methods 
have been antipodal ; but they have both been 
keen observers of the rural Indianians, though 
of different generations. They meet in a strong 
^33 



134 THE HOOSIERS 

affection for their native soil, and in an appre- 
ciation of the essential domesticity and moral 
enlightenment of the people they depict. 

I. Edward Eggleston 

Switzerland County lies in the far southeast- 
ern corner of the State, and Vevay, its principal 
town and capital, is on the Ohio River. The 
name of the county is explained by the fact of its 
settlement by Swiss immigrants, who were drawn 
thither by the supposed adaptability of the soil 
to the growth of the grape. Vevay lies about 
midway between Louisville and Cincinnati, and 
the steamboats plying between these two cities 
are its only medium of communication with the 
world, as no railway touches it. It was to this 
pretty village that Joseph Cary Eggleston, the 
father of Edward and George Cary Eggleston, 
came in 1832. The impression has been 
abroad that the author of "The Hoosier 
Schoolmaster '* was himself reared amid the 
squalor and ignorance which he described so 
vividly, but this is without foundation of fact. 
The Egglestons were of good Virginia stock, 
and the members of the Indiana branch of the 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 135 

family were cultivated people. Joseph Gary 
was graduated from William and Mary College 
in his seventeenth year with high honors. He 
had studied law before he left Virginia, and 
the fourteen years of his life that remained to 
him after his removal to Indiana were spent in 
the successful practice of his profession. He 
was, moreover, popular in the community, for 
he sat in both branches of the General Assem- 
bly, and was nominated for representative in 
Congress, but failed of election. He married, 
soon after reaching Indiana, the daughter of 
George Craig, of Craig township, in Switzer- 
land County. The Craigs were of a dis- 
tinguished Kentucky family, and, like the 
Egglestons, looked back to a Virginia ancestry. 
Edward Eggleston was born at Vevay in 1837, 
and has never failed to speak with great cordial- 
ity and affection of the pretty river town whose 
chief distinction lies in his own attainments. 
He has even taken occasion in recent years ^ to 
rebuke "a certain condescension in New Eng- 
landers," which had prompted the Atlantic 
Monthly to comment on the hardship it must 

1 The Forum, November, 1890. 



136 THE HOOSIERS 

have been *'lo a highly organized man" to be 
born in southern Indiana in the crude early- 
years of the nineteenth century. Dr. Eggleston 
declares that he has retained enough of local 
prejudice to feel that he would have lost more 
than he could have gained had Plymouth Rock 
or Beacon Hill been his birthplace rather than 
Vevay. He was sensitive to the loveliness of 
the Indiana spring and summer, and has paid 
tribute to it in words which it is a pleasure to 
repeat : — 

" The sound of the anvil in the smithy, and the soft 
clatter of remote cow-bells on the ' commons,' linger in 
my mind as memories inseparable from my boyhood in 
Vevay. A certain poetic feeling which characterized me 
from childhood, and which, perhaps, finally determined 
my course toward literary pursuits, was nourished by my 
delight in the noble scenery about Vevay, Madison, and 
New Albany, in which places I lived at various times. 
My brother George and myself were walkers, partly 
because our father had been one before us. Nothing 
could be finer than our all-day excursions to the woods 
in search of hickory-nuts, wild grapes, blackberries, paw- 
paws, or of nothing at all but the sheer pleasure of wan- 
dering in one of the noblest forests that it ever fell to a 
boy^s lot to have for a playground. Then, too, when we 
had some business five or twenty miles away, we scorned 
to take the steamboat, but just set out afoot along the 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 37 

river bank, getting no end of pleasure out of the walk, and 
out of that sense of power which unusual fatigue, cheer- 
fully borne, always gives." ^ 

Dr. Eggleston's early life was full of vicissi- 
tude, but he has himself disclaimed credit for 
being what is called "a self-made man." It is 
true that he had his own way to make, in great 
measure, but he began with all the benefits 
of good ancestry, and he was, in his own 
phrase, "born into an intellectual atmosphere." 
Joseph Gary Eggleston, who died when Edward 
was only nine years old, provided in his will 
for the exchange of his law library for books 
of general interest, that his children might 
have good literature about them in their forma- 
tive years — a direction that was followed 
faithfully by his widow. The boy Edward 
grew up with the ideal of a scholarly father 
before him, and with an ambition to know 
books and to read other languages than his 
own. He learned also the mystery of type- 
setting, and contributed items to the Vevay 
Reveille^ duly "set up." Dr. Eggleston records 
that in his primary schooling, conducted by 

1 The Forum, supra. 



138 THE HOOSIERS 

his mother, he proved himself a dull scholar, 
but that some kind of climacteric was passed 
in his tenth year, and that thenceforward he 
was the pride of his teachers. Manual train- 
ing was hardly dreamed of in those days, 
but Joseph Eggleston had an appreciation of 
its value and left what Edward has described 
as "a solemn injunction that his sons should 
be sent to the country every summer and 
taught manual labor on a farm." This injunc- 
tion was carefully obeyed, so that Edward 
Eggleston had an actual experience of farming 
and a contact with farm folk that was a part 
of his preparation for the writing of the tales 
that gave him his first fame. Judge Miles 
Eggleston, Joseph's brother, was more dis- 
tinctly an Indianian than any other member 
of the family by reason of his long residence 
in the State and his public services. Guilford 
Eggleston, Joseph Eggleston's cousin, was iden- 
tified with the family life at Vevay. He was 
a man of many accomplishments, and left a 
deep impression on Edward Eggleston, who 
has spoken of his brilliant talk as a perpetual 
inspiration : " He incessantly stimulated my love 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 39 

for literature, guided my choice of books, 
taught me to make a commonplace book of my 
reading, and by his conversation and example 
made me feel that to lead an intellectual life 
was the most laudable pursuit of a human 
being." The direction thus given to the boyish 
impulse, and the atmosphere of his home, 
were of great importance to Edward, for of 
systematic schooling he was to know little. He 
was never but once in his life able to spend 
three consecutive months in school, and after 
he reached his tenth year the sum of his school- 
ing was only eighteen months. 

Joseph Eggleston had foreseen his own death 
and provided in various ways for the education 
of his sons. He purchased a scholarship in 
Asbury (DePauw) College, but continued ill 
health made it impossible for Edward to avail 
himself of its benefits, though his younger 
brother, George Gary, became a student there. 
Just what Edward Eggleston lost by his ir- 
regular schooling, which was almost wholly in- 
dependent of instructors in the usual sense of 
the term, is hardly a profitable subject for specu- 
lation. By following his own bent, he strength- 



I40 THE HOOSIERS 

ened himself along lines of natural preference, 
and he formed that habit of wise selection and 
rejection which in itself marks the educated 
man. Although schoolhouse doors were closed 
against him on account of his precarious health, 
he was nevertheless permitted to court death 
by close application in home study. He ac- 
quired, by the time he reached his twenty-fifth 
year, some knowledge of six or seven languages, 
and a familiar acquaintance with classical Eng- 
lish and French poetry. He knew both the 
English and French dramatic literature, though, 
having been bred in the strictest teaching of the 
Methodists of that day, he read few novels, 
and he gives his own testimony that he should 
have esteemed it '' a damnable sin to see a 
play on the stage." 

When Edward Eggleston was in his twelfth 
year, his mother remarried, taking for her hus- 
band the Rev. William Terrell, a Methodist 
minister. This change brought with it a wider 
horizon for the boy, as his stepfather's duties 
led the family away from Vevay to Madison 
and New Albany, also on the Ohio, but larger 
towns than Vevay. When sixteen, he 'spent 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 141 

more than a year with his father's family in 
Virginia. The sharp transition from the con- 
ditions in the newer to those of the older coun- 
try quickened his powers of observation. The 
tribulations of the Western pioneers had been 
discussed in his hearing by his elders during 
the most impressionable years of his childhood ; 
his grandfather Craig's stone house was a re- 
minder of times not remote when the Indians 
were a daily menace ; and the recitals of the 
wandering apostles of Methodism in his mother's 
house had given him further contact with the 
adventure and romance of pioneer life. Vir- 
ginia opened new vistas, and the novel condi- 
tions of life that he found there extended his 
knowledge of men and manners, and afforded 
an opportunity for criticism and comparison 
that was of definite value. He found himself 
cousin to a considerable part of the population, 
and this wide relationship gave him an acquain- 
tance with the charming social life of old Vir- 
ginia ; but he counted himself an abolitionist, 
he says, from the time of this visit. 

The abundant vitality of Dr. Eggleston's 
later years has been so strikingly character- 



142 THE HOOSIERS 

istic that it is difficult to believe that ill health 
followed him from semi-invalid boyhood into 
manhood; but the year after his return from 
Virginia he was sent to Minnesota in the hope 
that the change might benefit him, and the 
kind fates thus threw him into still other and 
different experiences. He was in the new 
Northwest when the free-soil excitement in 
Kansas thrilled the country, and he set out 
afoot, with a dirk knife as his only weapon, 
for the scene of conflict. He has himself 
described the failure and result of this ex- 
cursion : — 

" After weeks of weary walking and nights spent in the 
discomforts of frontier cabins, I grew sick at heart and 
longed for the companionship and refinements of home. 
I was rather glad to learn that men from the free States 
were entirely shut out of the besieged territory on the 
Iowa side. My moccasins were worn out, my feet were 
sore, my little stock of money was failing, and I was tired 
of husbanding it by eating crackers and cheese. I turned 
eastward at a point west of Cedar Falls, crossed the Mis- 
sissippi at Muscatine, and after walking in all three or four 
hundred miles, I at length boarded a railway train at a 
station near Galesburg, and reached my nearest relatives 
after an enforced fast of twenty-four hours, without a cent 
in my pocket, and looking, in my soiled and travel-worn 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 43 

garments, like a young border ruffian. I had left home a 
pale invalid ; I returned sun-browned and well." 

But this gain in bodily strength was not to 
profit him long. He had been bred in the 
Methodist faith ; his stepfather was a minister 
of wide reputation in this denomination, and 
the youth, with his studious disposition and 
gift for speech, turned naturally to the min- 
istry. He has said of himself that an inward 
conflict between his predisposition to literary 
work and the tendency to religion and philan- 
thropy began in boyhood and has continued 
throughout his life. There were times in his 
youth when his love for literature seemed an 
idolatry, and once in a repentant mood he 
destroyed his youthful manuscripts and re- 
solved to abandon literature. He was now 
launched upon the Methodist circuit rider's 
life of hardship and peril, covering a four 
weeks' itinerary in the county of which New 
Albany is the capital, and performing his duties 
with such diligence that in six months he 
was again a wreck. He therefore removed 
to Minnesota, and continued in the ministry, 
save for intervals of physical prostration, until, 



144 "^^^ HOOSIERS 

in 1866, he accepted the editorship of The 
Little Corporal, a popular juvenile periodical 
pubUshed at Chicago, and from that beginning 
was irresistibly drawn to the business of making 
books. In 1874, he became pastor of a church 
in Brooklyn, to which he gave the name of 
the Church of Christian Endeavor, and which 
sought to make sunshine in shady places. It 
was, indeed, the ''Church of the Best Licks," 
of the " Hoosier Schoolmaster," slightly con- 
ventionalized. Dr. Eggleston continued in the 
pastorate for five years, devoting himself to 
his work with his accustomed zeal and enthusi- 
asm, which resulted in another collapse. He 
then retired finally from the ministry ; but the 
phrase, "Christian Endeavor," first applied by 
Dr. Eggleston to his Brooklyn church, is widely 
known as the name of a society of young 
people. 

Unconscious preparation for a life-employ- 
ment has rarely been more clearly exempHfied 
in American literature than in the case of Dr. 
Eggleston. This is not true as to his novels 
of Western life merely, but as to the later 
historical writing in which he has so success- 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 45 

fully detected and appraised various aspects of 
our social growth. His early experiences at the 
West were indelibly written in his memory, and 
though he did not at once transcribe them, 
his work as editor sharpened his instincts 
and helped him to an appreciation of his own 
material. His removal to New York in 1870 
was another fortunate step of preparation, for 
it gave him a perspective which he could 
not have gained had he remained at the West. 
He wrote almost immediately " The Hoosier 
Schoolmaster," the first draft, designed for 
Hearth and Homey being in the form of a 
short story, which he extended to its present 
form at the suggestion of one of the proprietors 
of the periodical. The reading of Taine's 
" Art in the Netherlands " was the quickening 
influence that led to the writing of the story. 
Dr. Eggleston learned from Taine that an 
artist should paint what he sees, and he there- 
fore undertook to portray the illiterate people 
of southern Indiana. The story was published 
in book form and gained wide popularity, which 
has not diminished in the thirty years since its 
appearance. Dr. Eggleston has been criticised 



146 THE HOOSIERS 

severely in Indiana for the series of novels 
that began with *' The Hoosier Schoolmaster," 
but this criticism has come largely from a new 
generation that does not view these tales in 
the light of history, and is, therefore, hardly 
competent to pass on their veracity. By the 
legal tests for expert witnesses Dr. Eggleston 
is certainly quaHfied to speak; his own experi- 
ence and the social evolution of the people 
of Indiana contribute to the creation of his 
competency ; and when we add to these con- 
siderations his instinctive interest in the begin- 
nings and tendencies of American life, it is 
not possible to reject him. He knew, as he 
says, "the antique Hoosier." The Indiana of 
1850 was very different from that of 1870, and 
Dr. Eggleston was looking backward a score 
of years when he created Ralph Hartsook, 
the youthful schoolmaster, and threw about 
him an atmosphere of ignorance and vice. 
The story is an instructive footnote to the 
history of education in Indiana. " Bud Means" 
is of the second generation of Hoosiers — the 
generation which, outside of the first social 
order, had little or no benefit of education, and 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 47 

which sank to the condition of illiteracy that 
awakened presently the efforts of the faithful 
few who won the fight for free schools. Cour- 
age preceded knowledge as a requirement of 
pedagogues in the period of which Dr. Eggle- 
ston wrote. "* Lickin' and larnin* goes together; 
no lickin', no larnin',' declared Pete Jones." 
The student who may hereafter scan the educa- 
tional history of Indiana and read with dis- 
may the statistics compiled by Mills, will welcome 
this unadorned tale, that illuminates and con- 
firms the dry facts of the statistician. Eggle- 
ston, the novelist, kept Eggleston, the preacher, 
well in hand, and there is no tedious morahzing 
in the book. It is not difficult to understand 
the prompt recognition of the story or its long- 
continued attraction. The subject was novel, 
the characters were new, and the scene was 
set in a region that had never before been 
seriously explored by the story-teller. It was, 
as an army officer put it, a cavalry dash into 
literature. The incidents were linked together 
with skill, and their air of entire credibility 
has not been lost in the years that have passed 
since it surprised and delighted its first readers. 



148 THE HOOSIERS 

Enjoyment of the story was not limited to 
English readers. It was translated into French 
by Madame Blanc, and was published in con- 
densed form in the Revue des Deux Mondes 
with the title " Le Maitre d'Ecole de Flat 
Creek." German and Danish translations fol- 
lowed, so that " Bud Means " has enjoyed 
opportunities for foreign travel quite unusual 
among his neighbors. 

*'The End of the World" (1872) continued 
the series of stories which Dr. Eggleston had 
begun in the " Schoolmaster." Religious phe- 
nomena were the most marked social expres- 
sion in the time and place of which he wrote. 
It was religion that offered to the isolated 
people of the new frontier the only relief that 
their lives knew from toil, hardship, and dan- 
ger ; and what appears now, at the distance 
of fifty years, to have been a mania was with 
them a grave and vital matter. "The End of 
the World " is a tale of the Millerite excite- 
ment, which swept the country in 1 842-1 843, 
and Dr. Eggleston adapted it very entertainingly 
to the purposes of fiction. "The Mystery of 
Metropolisville " (1873) led away from Indiana 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 49 

into Minnesota, with which Dr. Eggleston had 
become acquainted as a minister. Against a 
background of the land-booming period, he illus- 
trates the dangers and temptations of the 
pioneers ; and while the tale is less satisfactory 
than any of the Indiana series, it remains after 
thirty years a readable novel. It was hardly 
possible for Dr. Eggleston to forget wholly the 
people he had known on the Ohio, and he 
introduces in ** The Mystery of Metropolisville " 
a Hoosier poet, who had left the " Waybosh " 
because his literary efforts were not appreciated 
there. He carried his ambitions into Minne- 
sota, became a trapper and land speculator, 
and there, to quote from one of his own 
stanzas, — 

"His Hoosier harp hangs on the wild water-wilier." 

Dr. Eggleston had been established at New 
York for eight years when he wrote '' Roxy " 
(1878), one of the best of his books, and one 
which depicts even more vividly than " The 
Hoosier Schoolmaster " his early environment. 
He was now forty-one, and the years that had 
added to the sum of his experience had devel- 



150 THE HOOSIERS 

oped also his natural instinct for character. 
The dramatic quality, too, shows strongly in 
this tale, which is, in its moral relation, a kind 
of Western " Scarlet Letter." There is more 
or less of Vevay in this novel, — it is not impor- 
tant to inquire too curiously whether it be 
more or less, — and the pretty river village, 
with its slight foreign color, which was derived 
from the Swiss residents, the mystery and 
novelty of the broad river highway, the sim- 
plicity of the life, its lazy gossip and its 
religious enthusiasms, are all depicted with 
fidelity. The Bonabys, father and son, the 
lurking figure of Nancy, Twonnet, and Roxy, 
possess the interest that attaches to fresh types. 
The introduction of the volatile Twonnet, a 
member of the Swiss Colony, in contrast with 
the sober Roxy, the unobtrusive presentation 
of the religious problems that held the attention 
of the community, and the blending of the 
threads of young Bonaby's destiny, are accom- 
plished with skill and power. 

In "The Circuit Rider" (1874) Dr. Eggle- 
ston crossed the Indiana boundary into southern 
Ohio, but for all critical purposes the type re- 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 151 

mained the same. Political frontiers do not 
deter the novelist, who enjoys extra-territorial 
privileges. " The Circuit Rider " is not so 
entertaining a story as " Roxy." The char- 
acters do not take hold of the imagination 
here as in the later book, and those somewhat 
vague qualities that combine to the creation 
of atmosphere are not blended so effectively. 
But as a picture of the strenuous rehgious 
life of the Ohio Valley in the early half of 
the century, the story is most important. In 
" Roxy " the strife between Calvinism and 
Wesleyism is more strongly contrasted ; but 
" The Circuit Rider " gives a vivid impression 
of a period that was made remarkable by the 
heroism and sacrifice of the Methodist evan- 
gelists. After " Roxy " Dr. Eggleston did not 
return to the field of his early successes until 
he wrote " The Graysons " (1887). Like " The 
Circuit Rider '* this story is not, geographically 
speaking, of Indiana, but it is nevertheless of 
that broader Hoosierdom which comprehended 
a small part of southern Ohio and consider- 
ably more of Illinois. This is one of the best 
of all the Hoosier cycle, and, indeed, one of 



152 THE HOOSIERS 

the best of American novels. There is not an 
inartistic line in the book, and the manner in 
which Lincoln is introduced as a character, — 
appearing as the attorney for a boy charged 
with murder, and winning his freedom by a 
characteristic resort to homely philosophy, — is 
achieved so simply that the reader is left won- 
dering whether it could really have been the 
great Lincoln who participated in one scene, 
performed his part, and thereupon disappeared 
from the stage. A clumsy artist would have 
dwelt upon Lincoln, hinting at his future great- 
ness and reluctantly dismissing him ; Dr. Eggle- 
ston introduces the incident (which is based on 
fact) with an inadvertence that enhances its 
interest and increases its suggestivfeness. The 
dialect in this tale is much more critical than 
that in any other novel of Dr. Eggleston's 
Western series. In his earlier stories, writ- 
ten before the scientific study of American 
folk-speech had been undertaken, the dialect 
is more general. Dr. Eggleston's other works 
of fiction are : '' Mr. Blake's Walking Stick " 
(1869); "Book of Queer Stories" (1870); 
" The Schoolmaster's Stories for Boys and 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 53 

Girls" (1874); "Queer Stories for Boys and 
Girls" (1884); "The Faith Doctor" (1891); 
"Duffels" (1893). "The Faith Doctor" is a 
novel of New York, in which the prevailing 
interest in what Dr. Eggleston called " aerial 
therapeutics" supplies the motive. "Duffels" 
is a collection of short stories written at inter- 
vals throughout his literary career, with scenes 
laid in many parts of the country, and illustrat- 
ing happily the versatility and the story-telling 
gift of the author. 

Dr. Eggleston began in 1880 researches for a 
history of life in the United States. He pur- 
sued his studies abroad, as well as in American 
libraries, and assembled at his summer home 
on Lake George a large collection of Ameri- 
cana. The only published result of these stud- 
ies thus far is "The Beginners of a Nation" 
(1896), the most serious, searching, and exhaust- 
ive essay in Kultur-GescJiicJUe yet presented 
by an American. The mere politics of our 
history and its military incidents had long 
received the attention of students, to the exclu- 
sion of the social and domestic. A work such 
as Dr. Eggleston has undertaken is vastly 



154 THE HOOSIERS 

more difficult and therefore more important, 
for it requires original research in the strictest 
sense. His other historical works so far com- 
pleted are: "A History of the United States 
and its People for the Use of Schools" (1888); 
"The Household History of the United States 
and its People" (1888); and "A First Book in 
American History " (1889). 

Dr. Eggleston's life makes in itself a delight- 
ful story of aspiration and achievement. Many 
Americans have experienced hardship and dis- 
couragement, but few have profited so richly 
as this noveHst and historian by every whim 
of fortune. Ill health has menaced him all 
his days, but physical infirmity has never con- 
quered his ambition or diminished his mental 
vitality. There is about him an exuberance 
of spirits that is not only a distinguishing per- 
sonal trait, but a quality of all his stories. And 
if ill health in his youth and young manhood 
interrupted the orderly course of education, it 
also brought him opportunities for acquiring a 
broad knowledge of American provincial life 
that no school could have given him. When 
Dr. Eggleston began to write there was, out 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED I 55 

side of New England, little local literature, 
and the value of dialect in interpretative 
fiction was only beginning to be under- 
stood. Cable, Page, Harris, Murfree, ''Octave 
Thanet," were names unknown to the catalogues 
when "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" appeared. 
Mark Twain and Bret Harte were well 
embarked upon their careers ; but the one was 
a humorist and the other a romanticist, and 
neither had undertaken to reproduce local 
speech accurately. Dr. Eggleston was the 
pioneer provincial realist; and if, as he says, 
the great American novel is being written in 
sections, he certainly contributed early chapters, 
and indicated the lines to be followed. 

His marriage, in 1891, to Frances E. Goode, 
a granddaughter of his father's cousin. Judge 
Miles Gary Eggleston, renewed ties with Indi- 
ana that had never been wholly broken during 
long years of absence. He has often been a 
visitor to Madison, which was Mrs. Eggle- 
ston's home, and he spent the winter of 1899 
in that beautiful and tranquil town. Mr. Eggle- 
ston died September 4, 1902. 



156 THE HOOSIERS 

II. James Whitcomb Riley 

Crabbe and Burns are Mr. Riley's fore- 
fathers in literature. Crabbe was the pioneer 
in what may be called the realism of poetry; 
it was he who rejected the romantic pastoral- 
ism that had so long peopled the British fields 
with nymphs and shepherds, and introduced 
the crude but actual country folk of England, 
The humor, the bold democracy, and the social 
sophistication that he lacked were supplied in 
his own day by Burns, and Burns had, too, the 
singing instinct and the bolder art of which 
there are no traces in Crabbe. Something of 
Crabbe's realism and Burns's humor and phi- 
losophy are agreeably combined in Mr. Riley. 
His first successes were achieved in the por- 
trayal of the Indiana country and village folk 
in dialect. He has rarely seen fit to vary his 
subject, and he has been faithful to the environ- 
ment from which he derived his inspiration. 
James Whitcomb Riley is an interesting in- 
stance — perhaps, after Whittier, the most 
striking in our literature — of a natural poet, 
taking his texts from the familiar scenes and 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 57 

incidents of his own daily walks, and owing 
little or nothing to the schools. He was born 
at Greenfield, the seat of Hancock County, in 
1849. His father, Reuben A. Riley, was a 
native of Pennsylvania, of Dutch antecedents, 
though there is a tradition of Irish ancestry in 
the family. He was a lawyer, who enjoyed a 
wide reputation as an advocate, and was long 
reckoned among the most effective political 
speakers in Indiana. He was a discriminating 
reader and an occasional writer of both prose 
and verse. The poet's mother was a Marine, 
of a family in which an aptness for rhyming 
was characteristic. The Greenfield schools 
have always been excellent, and young Riley 
was fortunate in having for his teacher Lee O. 
Harris, himself a poet, who tried to adapt the 
curriculum of the Hancock County schools to 
the needs of an unusual pupil in whom imag- 
ination predominated to the exclusion of mathe- 
matics. 

Learning is, as Higginson has aptly con- 
densed it, not accumulation, but assimilation ; 
and ''the Hoosier poet" was born one of those 
fortunate men to whom schools are a mere incir 



158 THE HOOSIERS 

dent of education, but who walk through the 
world with their eyes open, adding daily to 
their stock of knowledge. Bagehot enlarges 
on this trait as he discovers it in Shakespeare, 
"throughout all whose writings," he says, 
*' you see an amazing sympathy with com- 
mon people." The common people caught 
and held the attention of Mr. Riley, and as 
the annalist of their simple lives he established 
himself firmly in public affection. The half a 
dozen colleges within a radius of fifty miles of 
his home did not attract him ; he was bred to 
no business, but followed in a tentative way 
occupations that brought him into contact with 
people. He began to write because he felt the 
impulse, and not because he breathed a liter- 
ary atmosphere or looked forward to a literary 
career. His imagination needed some outlet, 
and he made verses just as he drew pictures or 
acquired a knack at playing the guitar, taking 
one talent about as seriously as the other. A 
Western county seat, with its daily advent of 
pilgrims from the farms, affords an entertain- 
ing panorama for a bright boy, and Mr. Riley 
began in his youth that careful observation of 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 59 

the Indiana country folk, their ways and their 
speech, that was later to afford him a seemingly 
inexhaustible supply of material. 

He had in his younger days something of 
Artemus Ward's fondness for a hoax, and 
he wrote " Leonaine," in imitation of Poe's 
manner, with so marked success that several 
critics of discernment received the poem, and 
the story of its discovery in an old school 
reader, in good faith. In the experimental pe- 
riod of his career he read widely and to good 
purpose, learning the mechanics of prosody 
from the best models. His ear was naturally 
good, and he was distinctly original in his ideas 
of form. He delighted in the manipulation of 
words into odd and surprising combinations, 
and though the results were not always digni- 
fied, they were, nevertheless, curious and amus- 
ing, and brought him a degree of local fame. 
Mr. Riley's contributions were wholly to news- 
papers through many years, during which the 
more deliberate periodicals would have none of 
him. He printed poems in the Herald^ an In- 
dianapolis weekly paper, in which the poems of 
Edith M. Thomas and others who have since 



l6o THE HOOSIERS 

gained a literary reputation first saw the light ; 
and having attracted the attention of E. B. Mar- 
tindale, the owner of the Indianapolis Journal, 
he was regularly employed on that paper, be- 
tween 1877 and 1885, printing many of his 
best pieces there. He had the pleasure of 
seeing his verses widely copied at that period, 
when the newspaper press was his only medium 
of communication, and before he had printed a 
volume. His first marked recognition followed 
the publication in the Journal of a series of 
poems signed "Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone," 
which not only awakened wide interest, but 
gave direction to a talent that had theretofore 
been without definite aim. He encouraged the 
idea that the poems were really the work of a 
countryman, and prefaced them with letters in 
prose to add to their air of authenticity, much 
as Lowell introduced the " Biglow Papers." 
This series included *' Thoughts fer the Dis- 
curaged Farmer," "When the Frost is on the 
Punkin," and "To My Old Friend, William 
Leachman," which were winningly unaffected 
and simple, bearing out capitally the impres- 
sion of a bucolic poet celebrating his own joys 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED l6l 

and sorrows. The charm of the '* Benj. F, 
Johnson " series lay in their perfect suggestion 
of a whimsical, lovable character, and wherever 
Mr. Riley follows the method employed first 
in those pieces, he never fails of his effect 

It should be remembered, in passing from 
Riley masquerading as "Benj. F. Johnson" 
to Riley undisguised, that two kinds of dialect 
are represented. The Boone County poet's 
contributions are printed as the old farmer is 
supposed to have written them, not as reported 
by a critical listener. There is a difference 
between the attempt of an illiterate man to 
express his own ideas on paper, and a tran- 
script of his utterances set down by one trained 
to the business — the vernacular as observed 
and recorded by a conscious artist. In every 
community there is a local humorist, a sayer 
of quaint things, whose oddities of speech gain 
wide acceptance and circulation, and Mr. Riley 
is his discoverer in Indiana. Lowell, with his 
own New England particularly in mind, said 
that " almost every county has some good die- 
sinker in phrase, whose mintage passes into the 
currency of the whole neighborhood " ; and 



1 62 THE HOOSIERS 

this may be applied generally to the South 
and West. Mr. Riley writes always with his 
eye on a character ; and those who question 
his dialect do not understand that there is 
ever present in his mind a real individual. 
The feeling and the incident are not peculiar 
to the type; they usually lie within the range 
of universal experience ; but the expression, the 
manner, the figure of the subject, are sug- 
gested in the poem, not by speech alone, but 
by the lilt of the line and the form of the 
stanza. Mr. Riley is more interested in odd 
characters, possessing marked eccentricities, 
than in the common, normal type of the farm 
or the country town, and the dialect that he 
employs often departs from the usual vocabu- 
lary of the illiterate in the field he studies, and 
follows lines of individual idiosyncrasy. The 
shrewdly humorous farmer who is a whimsical 
philosopher and rude moralist delights him. 
This character appears frequently in his poems, 
often mourning for the old times, now delight- 
ing in " noon-time an' June-time, down around 
the river " ; and again expressing contentment 
with his own lot, averring that " they*s nothin' 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 63 

much patheticker 'n just a-bein' rich." To 
these characters he gives a dialect that is 
fuller than the usual rural speech : viinistrati7i' 
(ministering), resignated (resigned), artificialer 
(more artificial), competenter (more competent), 
tractabler (more tractable), and familiously 
(familiarly;, not being properly in the Hoosier 
lingua rustica, but easily conceivable as pos- 
sible deviations. Mr. Riley has been criticised 
for imputing to his characters such phrases 
as ''when the army broke out" and ''durin' 
the army," referring to the Civil War, and 
many careful observers declare that he could 
never have heard these phrases ; but very 
likely he has heard them from the eccentric 
countrymen for whom he has so strong an 
affinity; or he may have coined them out- 
right as essential to the interpretation of such 
characters. In the main, however, he may be 
followed safely as an accurate guide in the 
speech of the Southeastern element of the 
population, and his questionable usages and in- 
consistencies are few and slight, as the phrase 
"don't you knoiv," which does not always 
ring true, or ** again " and " agin," used inter- 



1 64 THE HOOSIERS 

changeably and evidently as the rhyme may 
hint. The abrupt beginning of a sentence, 
frequently noticed in Mr. Riley's dialect verses, 
is natural. The illiterate often experience dif- 
ficulty in opening a conversation, expressing 
only a fragment, to which an interlocutor 
must prefix for himself the unspoken phrases. 
There is no imposition in Mr. Riley's dialect, 
for his amplifications of it are always for the 
purpose of aiding in the suggestion of a char- 
acter as he conceives it ; he does not pretend 
that he portrays in such instances a type 
found at every cross-roads. " Doc Sifers " and 
** The Raggedy Man " are not peculiar to 
Indiana, but have their respective counterparts 
in such characters as Mark Twain's ''Pudd'n- 
head Wilson " and the wayside tramp, who 
has lately been a feature of farce comedy 
rather than of our social economy. " Fessler's 
Bees," ''Nothin' to say," ''Down to the Capi- 
tal," "A Liz-town Humorist," and "Squire 
Hawkins's Story " show Mr. Riley at his hap- 
piest as a delineator of the rural type. In 
these sketches he gives in brief compass the 
effect of little dramas, now humorous, now 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 165 

touched with simple and natural pathos, and 
showing a nice appreciation of the color of 
language which is quite as essential in dialect 
as in pure English. But it matters little that 
the dramatis persojics change, or that the liter- 
ary method varies ; the same kindliness, the 
same blending of humor and pathos, and the 
same background of ''green fields and run- 
ning brooks " characterize all. " The crude 
man is," the poet believes, "generally moral," 
and the Riley Hoosier is intuitively religious, 
and is distinguished by his rectitude and sense 
of justice. 

Mr. Riley made his work effective through 
the possession of a sound instinct for apprais- 
ing his material, combined with a good sense 
of proportion. His touch grew steadily firmer, 
and he became more fastidious as the public 
made greater demands upon him ; for while 
his poems in dialect gained him a hearing, 
he strove earnestly for excellence in the use 
of literary English. He has written many 
poems of sentiment gracefully and musically, 
and with no suggestion of dialect. Abundant 
instances of his felicity in the strain of retro- 



l66 THE HOOSIERS 

spect and musing might be cited. The same 
chords have been struck time and time again ; 
but they take new life when he touches them, 
as in " The All-Golden " : — 

" I catch my breath, as children do 

In woodland swings when life is new, 

And all the blood is warm as wine 

And tingles with a tang divine. . . . 

O gracious dream, and gracious time, 

And gracious theme, and gracious rhyme — 

When buds of Spring begin to blow 

In blossoms that we used to know, 

And lure us back along the ways 

Of time's all-golden yesterdays ! " 

It is not the farmer alone whose simple vir- 
tues appeal to him ; but rugged manhood any- 
where commands his tribute, and he has hardly 
written a more touching lyric than "Away," 
whose subject was an Indiana soldier: — 

" I cannot say, and I will not say 
That he is dead — He is just away ! " 

He has his own manner of expressing an 
idea, and this individuality is so marked that 
it might lead to the belief that he had 
little acquaintance with the classic English 
writers. But his series of imitations, includ- 
ing the prose of Scott and Dickens and 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 6/ 

the characteristic poems of Tennyson and 
Longfellow, are certainly the work of one who 
reads to good purpose and has a feeling for 
style. When he writes naturally there is no 
trace of bookishness in his work ; he rarely or 
never invokes the mythologies, though it has 
sometimes pleased him to imagine Pan piping 
in Hoosier orchards. He is read and quoted 
by many who are not habitual readers of 
poetry — who would consider it a sign of 
weakness to be caught in the act of reading 
poems of any kind, but who tolerate senti- 
ment in him because he makes it perfectly 
natural and surrounds it with a familiar atmos- 
phere of reality. The average man must be 
trapped into any display of emotion, and Mr. 
Riley spreads for him many nets from which 
there is no escape, as in " Nothin' to say, my 
daughter," where the subject is the loneliness 
and isolation of the father whose daughter is 
about to marry, and who faces the situation 
clumsily, in the manner of all fathers, rich or 
poor. The remembrance of the dead wife 
and mother adds to the pathos here. The old 
man turns naturally to the thought of her: — 



l68 THE HOOSIERS 

**You don't rickollect her, I reckon? No; you wasn't a 

year old then ! 
And now yer — how old air you? W'y, child, not 

'twenty''! When? 
And yer nex' birthday's in Aprile ? and you want to git 

married that day ? 
I wisht yer mother was livin' ! — but I hain't got nothin' 

to say ! 
Twenty year ! and as good a gyrl as parent ever found ! 
There's a straw ketched onto yer dress there — I'll bresh 

it off — turn round. 
(Her mother was jest twenty when us two run away.) 
Nothin' to say, my daughter ! Nothin' at all to say ! " 

The drolleries of childhood have furnished 
Mr. Riley subjects for some of his most 
original and popular verses. Here, again, he 
does not accept the conventional children of 
literature, whom he calls "the refined chil- 
dren, the very proper children — the studiously 
thoughtful, poetic children " ; but he seeks 
" the rough-and-tumble little fellows ' in hodden 
gray,' with frowzly heads, begrimed but 
laughing faces, and such awful vulgarities of 
naturalness, and crimes of simphcity, and brazen 
faith and trust, and love of life and everybody 
in it ! " It is in this spirit that he presents 
now the nai've, now the perversely erring, and 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 69 

again the eerie and elfish child. He is a 
master of those enchantments of childhood 
that transfigure and illumine and create a 
world of the imagination for the young that 
is undiscoverable save to the elect few. He 
does not write patronizingly to his audience ; 
but listens, as one should listen in the realm 
of childhood, with serious attention, and then 
becomes an amanuensis, transcribing the chil- 
dren's legends and guesses at the riddle of 
existence in their own language. "The Rag- 
gedy Man " is not a romantic figure ; he is 
the shabby chore-man of the well-to-do folk 
in the country town, and the friend and oracle 
of small boys. His mind is filled with rare 
lore, he — 

" Knows 'bout Giunts, an' GrifFuns an' Elves 
An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers therselves ! " 

And he may be responsible, too, for " Little 
Orphant Annie's " knowledge of the "Gobble- 
uns," which Mr. Riley turned into the most 
successful of all his juvenile pieces. He repro- 
duces most vividly a child's eager, breathless 
manner of speech, and the elisions and varia- 
tions that make the child-dialect. Interspersed 



I/O THE HOOSIERS 

through " The Child World," a long poem in 
rhymed couplets, are a number of droll juvenile 
recitatives ; but this poem has a much greater 
value than^ at first appears. It presents an 
excellent picture of domestic life in a western 
country town, and the town is Mr. Riley's own 
Greenfield, on the National Road. This poem 
is a faithful chronicle, lively and humorous, full 
of the local atmosphere, and never dull. The 
descriptions of the characters are in Mr. Riley's 
happiest vein : the father of the house, a law- 
yer and leading citizen ; the patient mother ; 
the children with their various interests, leading 
up to " Uncle Mart," the printer, who aspired 
to be an actor — 

" He joyed in verse-quotations — which he took 
Out of the old ' Type Foundry Specimen Book.' " 

The poem is written in free, colloquial English, 
broken by lapses into the vernacular. It con- 
tains some of his best writing, and proves him 
to possess a range and breadth of vision that 
are not denoted in his lyrical pieces alone. 
" The Flying Islands of the Night, a fantastic 
drama in verse," his only other effort of length, 
was written earlier. It abounds in the curious 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED I /I 

and capricious, but it lacks in simplicity and 
reserve — qualities that have steadily grown 
in him. 

Humor is preeminent in Mr. Riley, and it 
suggests that of Dickens in its kinship with 
pathos. It seems to be peculiar to the literature 
of lowly life that there is heartache beneath 
much of its gayety, and tears are almost inevi- 
tably associated with its laughter. Mr. Riley 
never satirizes, never ridicules his creations ; 
his attitude is always that of the kindly and 
admiring advocate ; and it is by enlisting the 
sympathy of his readers, suggesting much to 
their feeling and imagination, and awakening 
in them a response that aids and supplements 
his own work, that Mr. Riley has won his way 
to the popular heart. The restraints of fixed 
forms have not interfered with his adequate 
expression of pure feeling. This is proved b}^ 
the sonnet, "When She Comes Home Again," 
which is one of the tenderest of his poems. 
In the day that saw many of his contempo- 
raries in the younger choir of poets carving 
cherry stones of verse after French patterns 
he found old English models sufficient, and 



1^2 THE HOOSIERS 

his own whim supplied all the variety he 
needed. Heroic themes have not tempted 
him ; he has never attained sonority or power, 
and has never needed them; but melody and 
sweetness and a singular gift of invention 
distinguish him. 

Many imitators have paid tribute to Mr. 
Riley's dialect verse, for most can grow the 
flowers after the seed have been freely blown 
in the market-place. Perhaps the best compli- 
ment that can be paid to Mr. Riley's essential 
veracity is to compare the verse of those who 
have made attempts similar to his own. He is, 
for example, a much better artist than Will 
Carleton, who came before him, and whose 
" Farm Ballads " are deficient in humor ; and 
he possesses a breadth of sympathy and a depth 
of sincerity that Eugene Field did not attain in 
dialect verse, though Field's versatility and fecun- 
dity were amazing. There is nowhere in Mr. 
Riley a trace of the coarse brutality with which 
Mr. Hamlin Garland, for example, stamps the 
life of a region lying farther west. There is 
no point of contact between Lowell and Mr. 
Riley in their dialectic performances, as civic 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 73 

matters do not interest the Indianian ; and his 
view of the Civil War becomes naturally that 
of the countryman who looks back with wistful 
melancholy, not to the national danger and dread, 
but to the neighborhood's glory and sorrow, as 
in **Good-by, Jim." It might also be said that 
Mr. Riley has never put the thoughts of states- 
men into the mouths of countrymen, as Lowell 
did, consistency being one of his qualities. There 
has sprung up in Mr. Riley's time a choir of 
versifiers who are journalistic rather than liter- 
ary, and who write for the day, much as the 
reporters do. Mr. Riley, more than any one 
else, has furnished the models for these, and 
it would seem that verses could be multiplied 
interminably, or so long as such refrains as 
** When father winds the clock " and " The hymns 
that mother used to sing" can be found for 
texts. 

With the publication of the "Benj. F. John- 
son " poems in a paper-covered booklet, Mr. 
Riley's literary career began. The intervening 
years have brought him continuous applause ; 
his books of verse have been sold widely in this 
country and in England, and that, too, in '' the 



174 THE HOOSIERS 

twilight of the poets," with its contemporaneous 
oblivion for many who have labored bravely in 
the paths of song. He early added to his repu- 
tation as a writer that of a most successful 
reader of his own poems, and on both sides of 
the Atlantic his work and his unique personal- 
ity have won for him the friendship of many 
distinguished literary men of the day. It is to 
be said that the devotion of the people of his 
own State to their poet, from first to last, has 
been marked by* a cordiality and loyalty that 
might well be the envy of any man in any field 
of endeavor. No other Western poet has ever 
occupied a similar place ; and the reciprocal 
devotion, on the other hand, of the poet to his 
own people, is not less noteworthy or admirable. 
He has always resented the suggestion that he 
should leave Indiana for Boston or New York, 
where he might be more in touch with the 
makers of books; and in recent years he pur- 
chased the old family residence at Greenfield, 
to which he returns frequently for rest and 
inspiration. For fifteen years he has been the 
best-known figure in Indianapolis, studying 
with tireless attention the faces in the streets, 



THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 1 75 

nervously ranging the book-stores, and often 
sitting down to write a poem at the desk 
of some absentee in the Journal office. His 
frequent reading and lecturing tours have 
been miserable experiences for him, as he is 
utterly without the instinct of locality, and has 
timidly sat in the hotels of strange towns 
for many hours for lack of the courage re- 
quisite for exploration. Precision and correct- 
ness have distinguished him in certain ways, 
being marked, for example, in matters of dress 
and in his handwriting; his manuscripts are 
flawlessly correct, and the slouch and negligence 
of the traditional poet are not observed in 
him. 

His long list of books includes *' Afterwhiles " 
(1887); "Pipes of Pan at Zekesbury " (1888); 
** Old-fashioned Roses" (1889); "Rhymes of 
Childhood "(i 891); and "Poems Here at Home" 
(1897); and he has known the luxury of a cos- 
mopolitan edition of 'his writings in a series 
that embraced the definitive Stevenson. Fame 
came to Mr. Riley when he was still young, 
and it is only a fair assumption that he has 
not exhausted his field, but that he will grow 



176 THE HOOSIERS 

more and more secure in it. Serious work it 
has not always been possible for him to do, 
for his audience learned to expect humor in 
all his verses, and refused to be disappointed ; 
but his ambition lies beyond humorous dialect, 
though he finds no fault with the public pref- 
erence. All that he writes is welcome, for he 
is a preacher of sound optimism and a sincere 
believer in the final good that comes to all. 



CHAPTER VI 

CRAWFORDSVILLE 

There is an ineffable charm about an old 
town that has outlived its ambition to be a 
great city, and Crawfordsville is a fine type 
of such a place. The region was settled in 
1823, and the Montgomery County people, both 
farmers and townfolk, have long been counted 
among the sturdiest and most intelligent in the 
State. A cultivated society has always existed 
at Crawfordsville, and as the seat of Wabash 
College it acquired in its youth an academic 
air that it has never shaken off. The town 
has been called "The Hoosier Athens," by en- 
vious and less favored neighbors. The analogy 
is not wholly fortunate, as there are neither 
porticoes nor statues on the college campus, 
and no Cimon found occupation here, as at 
the elder Athens, in tree-planting. Nature had 
anticipated the need of "groves of academe," 
and the trees about the college and through 

N 177 



178 THE HOOSIERS 

the town are truly of the forest primeval, 
giving the agreeable impression of a rus in 
tirbe. Crawfordsville has often sent young 
men elsewhere to find occupation; but if its 
commercial attractions have been slight, its 
educational advantages have been proportion- 
ately great, and Wabash is able to point to a 
long list of successful alumni. The spirit of 
change has rarely invaded the college, and men 
are now holding chairs who have grown old in 
its service. Wabash has been content to do 
honest college work and has never made false 
pretensions as to its ability to do more. " Mere 
literature," as Bagehot fondly called it, has not 
been disregarded, and in no college of ampler 
endowment have the classics been taught more 
sympathetically or intelligently. It is one of 
the few colleges remaining at the West which 
close their doors to women, although importu- 
nate hands have long besought the wicket. 

The honor and dignity of learning have 
come to have a real meaning here, not only 
to those who seek instruction at the college, 
but to the people of the town as well. Wabash 
may not have directly influenced those who 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 1 79 

made Crawfordsville a seat of authorship, but 
certainly a fortunate chance led makers of 
books to seek the congenial atmosphere created 
by the college. In such a place one may 
not grow rich, but one may dwell contented; 
and while coarser commerce has not flour- 
ished greatly, much valuable manuscript has 
freighted the east-bound mails from Craw- 
fordsville. Authorship and scholarship alone 
have not engaged the inhabitants. Joseph E. 
McDonald, later a senator in Congress, once 
lived here, as did also John M. Butler, who 
became McDonald's law partner at Indianapo- 
lis and one of the ablest men of the Western 
bar. Butler's son, John Maurice Butler, was 
born at Crawfordsville, and his untimely death 
(1896) removed the man of most charming 
personaHty, and the keenest wit of his genera- 
tion at the capital. Henry Beebee Carrington 
had identified himself with Indiana's partici- 
pation in the War of the Rebellion before 
he became (1870-1873) professor of military 
science at Wabash. His stay at Crawfords- 
ville was brief, but the inhabitants prefer to 
believe that as he once breathed the Athenian 



l80 THE HOOSIERS 

air they axe entitled to share with Connecticut, 
his native State and later home, in the credit 
for his writings. The Whitlocks and the 
Elstons were among the first settlers, and were 
prominent in all the earlier labors of the com- 
munity. Henry S. Lane, General Wallace's 
brother-in-law, was a senator in Congress 
(1860-1 867), and lived and died here. 

I. General Lew Wallace 

General Lew Wallace, whose varied achieve- 
ments have contributed so largely to the town's 
fame, was not born at Crawfordsville, but at 
Brookville, in Franklin County, April 10, 1827. 
His father, David Wallace, had resigned from 
the regular army soon after his graduation from 
West Point in 1821. He studied law at Brook- 
ville, and soon began an interesting public career. 
He was one of the political giants of the State 
in his day, holding many offices and positions of 
honor. His first wife. General Wallace's mother, 
was the daughter of John Test, of a family long 
prominent in the State. General Wallace was an 
adventurous boy, impatient of all restraint, and 
fond of wandering, and he therefore received 



CRAWFORDSVILLE l8l 

little systematic education ; but his father owned 
an excellent library, and, as has happened with 
other boys who have refused to submit to the 
schoolmaster, he found his own way to the book 
shelves. He was for a time a student at Hosh- 
our's school at Centerville ; and he once ran 
away to join an older brother at Wabash ; but 
he was either unwilling or unable to break his 
nomadic habits, and continued to roam the 
woods until, at sixteen, his school bills were 
audited for the last time. He was beset by 
several ambitions ; literature, art, and a military 
career invited him. He had some skill at sketch- 
ing, and painted a portrait of Black Hawk, the 
Indian chief, drawing on the family medicine 
chest for castor oil to use in mixing his colors. 
He also completed a novel, " The Man at Arms : 
A Tale of the Tenth Century," of which he re- 
members little ; but Sulgrove in one of his chron- 
icles darkly hints that it was of the school of 
G. P. R. James. Robert Duncan, clerk of Marion 
County, in which Indianapolis is situated, em- 
ployed him as copyist, and he varied this prosaic 
occupation by reading law in his father's office. 
The Mexican War now broke upon the country, 



1 82 THE HOOSIERS 

and as Lewis — the second syllable disappeared 
during the Civil War — had painted a picture 
and written a romance, he now turned naturally 
to his third ambition. He organized a company 
and went south with the First Indiana Infantry. 
The regiment saw little of the war, but the cam- 
paign and his personal experience in military 
matters confirmed young Wallace's purpose to 
write a novel of Mexico, for which, by a kind of 
prevision and the inspiration of Prescott, he 
had already made tentative sketches. On his 
return to Indiana he again took up the law, and 
practised at Covington until 1852, when he re- 
moved to Crawfordsville, which has ever since 
been his home. He presently organized a mili- 
tary company, known as the " Montgomery 
Guards," and equipped it with the Zouave uni- 
form. This furnished an outlet for his ceaseless 
energy, and also for his pocket-book, as the 
State contributed nothing to the company's sup- 
port. He brought it to a high standard of 
efficiency, and at the outbreak of the Civil War 
it was one of the best-drilled military organiza- 
tions in the country. Governor Morton ap- 
pointed Mr. Wallace adjutant-general of the 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 183 

State at the first sign of hostilities, but he 
served in this capacity for a short time only, 
and organized the Eleventh Indiana Regiment, 
with his original Crawfordsville company as 
nucleus, and began an active and brilliant 
career in the army. Almost immediately his 
regiment distinguished itself in West Virginia. 
He was a brigadier-general before the capture 
of Fort Henry, and was made major-general 
for gallantry at Donelson. A year after Shiloh, 
a friend called General Wallace's attention to 
the official reports of that engagement, and he 
learned for the first time that he had been cen- 
sured for his conduct on the first day of the 
battle. He asked at once for a court of in- 
quiry, which was denied, and a long controversy 
followed. This died out for a time, but was 
renewed when Grant began the serial publica- 
tion of his memoirs. It was always maintained 
by General Wallace's friends that Grant was 
unjust to Wallace ; that the Indiana officer 
faithfully obeyed orders actually given him ; 
and certainly no one who ever had any acquain- 
tance with General Wallace would believe him 
capable of intentionally taking a circuitous 



I $4 THE HOOSIERS 

route to a battle-field. The effective service of 
his command on the second day of the battle 
should forever have stilled criticism ; as it was, 
Grant wrote in his memoirs — the last words 
that ever came from his pen — a footnote to his 
account of Pittsburg Landing that fairly acquitted 
General Wallace of all blame. Much has been 
written, by participants and others, touching the 
incident, and it has been made the subject of an 
exhaustive study by George F. McGinnis.^ While 
stationed at Baltimore, in 1864, General Wallace 
prevented a Confederate descent upon Washing- 
ton by intercepting Jubal Early at Monocacy. 
He threw 6,000 men against Early's force of 
28,000, suffering defeat, but detaining the enemy 
until Grant could send reenforcements from 
Virginia. This was one of the most important 
of all his military services, and he received for it 
Grant's cordial praise. General Wallace was a 
member of the court that tried the conspirators 
implicated in the assassination of Lincoln ; and 
he was president of the commission that tried and 
convicted Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of 
Andersonville Prison. 

1 " War Papers," Indiana Commandery, Loyal Legion, 1898. 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 1 85: 

When General Wallace returned to Craw- 
fordsville at the dose of the war he was thirty- 
eight ; he had served creditably in one war and 
with enviable distinction in a second, and he 
turned to the arts of peace from a military 
experience that had given him wide reputation 
and acquaintance among public men of the 
Civil War period. He began industriously to 
reestablish himself in his law practice, and 
varied his occupation with study and literary 
work. **The Man at Arms," his youthful at- 
tempt at " A Tale of the Tenth Century," had 
disappeared during his absence in Mexico ; but 
the ambition to write a romance of the invasion 
of Cortez, and his manuscript beginnings of it, 
had survived two wars, and he now set about 
finishing the story. He had at this time no 
definite ambition to become an author, and he 
gave his evenings to the writing of " The Fair 
God " with little idea of ever pubHshing it. Af- 
ter its completion he carried it East with him 
on a business journey. Whitelaw Reid gave 
him an introduction to a Boston pubHsher, and 
the result was the appearance of the tale in 
1873. He had spent in all about twelve years 



1 86 THE HOOSIERS 

on the book, part having been written, as al- 
ready stated, in his boyhood ; and the author's 
faithfulness to his early purpose through many 
years that had brought new duties and obliga- 
tions is in keeping with his whole character. 

The scenes of **The Fair God" were unfamil- 
iar to the novel reader, and the very names in 
the book were somewhat disconcerting ; but the 
tale was received in the beginning with a fair 
degree of interest, and it has ever since enjoyed 
a steady sale. The subsequent success of " Ben 
Hur " directed attention anew to General Wal- 
lace's earlier tale, but the romance was some- 
thing more than an amateur effort, and time 
has not diminished its entertaining qualities. 
As a picture of Aztecan civilization it is accu- 
rate, and the incidents are related in an orderly 
and natural manner that holds the attention. 
The devotion of the people to their religion is 
impressive; but the tale is essentially a mili- 
tary romance. The battle scenes following the 
appearance of Cortez and his Spaniards are 
described with an animation and an amplitude 
that impart to the reader the sense of behold- 
ing a series of great spectacles. The book is 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 1 8/ 

rich in those surprises which it is the business 
of the romancer to produce ; and the chapters 
descriptive of the battle towers {manias) which 
were among the European's resources, and of 
the retreat of the invaders, are noisy with the 
clang of battle. The prophecies of the mystic 
priest Mualox, who sees through the eyes of a 
child the coming of the Spaniards, are interest- 
ing; and curiously enough they had their origin 
in an incident of General Wallace's own expe- 
rience in Indiana, showing how the imagination 
may play upon the commonplace. When he 
lived at Covington, he formed the acquaintance 
of a tailor who was deeply interested in the 
occult sciences, and who once invited General 
Wallace to his shop to witness manifestations 
of his powers. The tailor placed his appren- 
tice under a kind of hypnotic influence, and 
told General Wallace to take the boy's hand 
and to follow in his own mind some route 
with whose details he was familiar. General 
Wallace obeyed, mentally reviewing a high- 
way that led to the house of a farmer client. 
The boy's lips moved, and he coherently 
described the road, and presently the farm- 



r88 THE HOOSIERS 

house, just as General Wallace saw them ; then 
he abruptly ceased to follow the leader's train 
of thought. He said that it was night; that 
some one came out of the house with a light, 
walked about inspecting the barnyard, and then 
returned to the house. The boy had now be- 
come exhausted; the tailor revived him, and 
General Wallace went on to his home. A few • 
days later, when the countryman whose farm 
had figured in the incident came to town, Gen- 
eral Wallace asked him if he had been at home 
at the hour mentioned ; he replied that he had 
been at home and asleep. Further questioning 
elicited the statement that at about the time 
of the experiment at the tailor shop he had 
been aroused by noises in the barnyard, and 
that, fearing some marauder was after his 
fowls, he had taken a light and gone out to 
see that all was secure. 

The friendly reception of "The Fair God" 
did not awaken any unusual interest in General 
Wallace as a writer. He continued at Craw- 
fordsville the life of a lawyer of polite tastes, 
keenly interested in politics. " The Fair God " 
out of the way, he began almost immediately 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 1 89 

to cast about for some new literary employment. 
In about 1874 it occurred to him to write a nov- 
elette, whose principal incident should be the 
meeting of the Wise Men in the Desert and the 
birth of Christ. The brief account in the Gos- 
pels had long appealed to his imagination, and 
he wrote what is now the first book of *' Ben 
Hur," intending to offer it to some magazine 
for publication as a sketch, with illustrations. 
While the manuscript still lay in his desk, he 
met on a railway journey an old friend, Colonel 
Robert G. Ingersoll, and in the course of conver- 
sation the famous sceptic touched on the subject 
of Christianity. General Wallace had always 
been indifferent in religious matters, neither 
denying nor affirming ; but Ingersoll's down- 
right iconoclasm alarmed him. He determined 
to investigate the subject and form his own con- 
clusions ; and he began researches and studies 
which continued through five years. When he 
had concluded, he fully accepted the tenets of 
Christian faith, and he had amplified his sketch 
of the Wise Men into the novel ** Ben Hur." 
Continuous labor had not been possible during 
the writing of this tale : he had been busy with 



IQO THE HOOSIERS 

everyday affairs; politics received a share of 
his attention; and he became, in 1878, by ap- 
pointment of President Hayes, governor of 
New Mexico Territory. He lived at Santa Fe 
for three years, and much of ''Ben Hur" was 
written in the governor's house there. General 
Wallace had never visited Palestine when he 
wrote *' Ben Hur," but there are points of resem- 
blance between the landscape of New Mexico 
and that of the Holy Land, and these were of 
assistance. He procured a profile map of Pal- 
estine, and was so attentive to topographical de- 
tail that later, when he visited the scenes of his 
story in company with a recognized authority in 
ancient history, every feature of the country as 
described in the book was verified. An immense 
amount of labor is represented in this novel. 
Many volumes were consulted in the search for 
antiquarian lore, that it might lack nothing 
that would aid in conveying an accurate impres- 
sion of the period. 

The book was capitally planned, striking epi- 
sodes falling into place naturally, and not too 
abundantly. The meeting of the Wise Men, 
the sea fight, and the chariot race are dramatic 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 191 

to a degree ; but the sombre picture of the 
crucifixion is unmarred by excess. The rever- 
ence which characterizes every mention of the 
Saviour is the author's happiest achievement in 
the story. The subject is difficult, but it is 
handled with admirable taste and refinement. 
However, the book does not depend for con- 
tinued attention on its interest as a religious 
novel ; it is equally noteworthy for its compre- 
hensive grasp of the politics of the period, its pic- 
ture of the various peoples that flowed through 
the streets of Jerusalem and Antioch, and the sug- 
gestion of a romantic commerce whose exploits 
lay in strange seas and beyond the deserts. Noth- 
ing in the book is accomplished more skilfully 
than the slow extinction of the idea of the coming 
of a great ruler of the world, to rebuild the throne 
of Solomon, and the gradual acceptance of the 
spiritual significance of Christ's advent; and it 
may be taken, in connection with the history of 
the novel, as a revelation of the growth in the 
author's own mind of a belief in the divine Sav- 
iour. Historical novels, particularly those that 
look to antiquity for subjects, follow necessa- 
rily certain traditions, and these are observed 



192 THE HOOSIERS 

carefully by General Wallace. Scott, more 
than any other, helped him, and " Ivanhoe," in 
particular, was his model. The writing in " Ben 
Hur " is uniformly good, and the dialogue in 
archaic speech is well sustained. General Wallace 
wrote out of an ample vocabulary enriched by 
the constant reading of Oriental narrative, and 
in his descriptions the epithets are always ap- 
posite. The success of " Ben Hur " was not 
immediate. It sold slowly for several years, 
but it gained steadily in popularity and contin- 
ues in favor with the booksellers. It has been 
translated into all the European languages, into 
Arabic and Japanese, and it is accessible to the 
blind in raised-letter. The sale of the copyright 
edition in America (1900) exceeds 1,200,000, 
which is probably greater than that of " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin." Many playwrights and actors pro- 
posed to General W^allace from time to time the 
dramatization of " Ben Hur," but he feared that 
the spirit of reverence, which he had so consist- 
ently communicated to the novel, would be lost 
in any play founded upon its incidents. He 
declined all offers until, in 1899, a plan was sub- 
mitted which met his approval, and in the fall 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 1 93 

of that year the play was given its first presenta- 
tion at New York. 

When President Garfield appointed General 
Wallace minister to Turkey, he wrote across his 
commission " Ben Hur." General Wallace 
called at the White House, just before leaving 
for his post, to pay his respects to the President, 
and Garfield said to him : " I expect another 
book from you. Your official duties will not be 
so onerous that you cannot write it. Make the 
scene Constantinople." The opportunity thus 
presented for further literary work was a con- 
sideration in accepting the post. The Turkish 
occupation of Constantinople is an incident of 
great historical importance, and in his search 
for material for a new romance, General Wal- 
lace determined to write a tale that should pre- 
sent a picture of the fierce struggle between 
Christian and Moslem. His studies at Con- 
stantinople led to the writing of " The Prince 
of India." The Prince is "The Wandering 
Jew." He appears as a man of mysterious 
gifts, who wields great wealth and power. He 
has discovered what he believes to be common 
ground upon which all the spiritually minded 



194 THE HOOSIERS 

may meet, irrespective of religion. He appears 
before the Emperor Constantine and presents 
his plan for a universal religious union, but he 
horrifies the theologians, and finding the Chris- 
tians unsympathetic, he turns to Mohammed, 
and bestows upon him the sword of Solomon, 
the sign of conquest, which he had found in the 
tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre. The tale has 
neither the interest of " Ben Hur " nor the 
novelty and military ardor of " The Fair 
God." The subject required deliberate treat- 
ment, and the hero, who is a scholar and a 
mystic, naturally deals in words often er than in 
actions. 

General Wallace's other writings are "The 
Boyhood of Christ " (1889), and " The Wooing 
of Malkatoon : a Turkish Tale, with Commo- 
dus, a Play " (1898), both in blank verse. 

There is nothing in General Wallace's literary 
career to encourage hasty and careless work- 
manship. His methods have been, from the be- 
ginning, those of a conscientious artist, who 
strives for excellence and is capable of cheerfully 
casting aside the work of many days if, by addi- 
tional labor, he can gain better results. He 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 195 

parleys with a sentence or debates with a syno- 
nym with a caution that is akin to Oriental di- 
plomacy. He has probably never written even 
a social letter carelessly, and if his correspond- 
ence were to be collected, it would prove to be 
of the same quality as his best printed work. 
There has always been a dignity in his ambi- 
tions. Military leadership came to him natu- 
rally, and when he took up literature, it was in 
a serious way, with subjects that were new and 
daring. By making every stroke count, and 
paying no heed to changing literary fashions, 
he has, in the intervals of unusually varied and 
exacting employments, cultivated the Uterary 
art with enviable success. 

Heredity and environment explain nothing in 
General Wallace. He is an estray from the 
Orient, whom Occidental conditions have influ- 
enced little. This is proved by all his imagina- 
tive writing, by his military tastes, by many 
qualities of his personality, and by his appear- 
ance and bearing. He has never written of 
American life, and the attraction of Mexico as 
a field for fiction lay in the splendor and re- 
naoteness of the early civilization of the country, 



196 THE HOOSIERS 

combined with the romance of its conquest by 
soldiers of Spain. In like manner, " Ben Hur " 
and *' The Prince of India " are such subjects as 
would naturally appeal to him. His fancy has 
dehghted always in the thought of pageantry, 
conquest, mystery, and mighty deeds; it has 
pleased him to contemplate the formal social life 
of the old heroic times. The beginning of his 
friendship with the Sultan illustrates a sympa- 
thy, native in him, with the Oriental character. 
General Wallace had reached Constantinople 
after his appointment as minister, but had not 
been formally received. On Friday, the Moslem 
Sunday, he went with the multitude to see the 
Sultan go to prayer. General Wallace was 
entitled, by act of Congress, to wear the uni- 
form of a major-general in the United States 
army, and he was clad in all the regalia of the 
rank. Between the gate of the imperial park 
and the Mosque which the Sultan attended 
was a small house, with a platform in front 
of it, set apart to strangers, and there General 
Wallace viewed the procession. The dark man 
in the rich uniform attracted the attention of 
the Sultan as he passed, and from the Mosque 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 1 97 

he sent Osman Pasha, the hero of Plevna, then 
marshal of the palace, to learn the identity of 
the stranger. On finding that he was the new 
American minister awaiting audience, the Sul- 
tan sent an invitation to General Wallace to 
accompany him on his return to the palace, an 
honor never before accorded to a minister not yet 
received. A carriage was sent for the Ameri- 
can, who returned in the brilliant cortege next 
to the carriage of the Sultan. The reception at 
the palace was particularly distinguished, and 
thereafter the relations between the two were 
intimate and cordial. The Sultan often sum- 
moned the minister to the palace, sometimes 
requesting interviews at the dead of night. All 
their conversation was through an interpreter, 
as the Sultan knew no English and General 
Wallace did not speak French. 

There was early stamped upon General Wal- 
lace an air of authority that went well with the 
military profession ; but later years have soft- 
ened this into a courtliness and grace of manner 
wholly charming. The Oriental strain in him 
has become more and more pronounced, sug- 
gesting that the years spent in the study of 



198 THE HOOSIERS 

Eastern history, and his actual contact with 
Oriental peoples, have emphasized it^ 

Mrs. Wallace (born Susan Arnold Elston) is 
a native of Crawfordsville. Her father was 
a pioneer of central Indiana. The homes of his 
descendants are grouped in Elston Grove, one 
of the prettiest spots in Crawfordsville. Gen- 
eral and Mrs. Wallace were married in 1852, 
and she is "the wife of my youth," to whom 
" Ben Hur " was dedicated. He received so 
many consolatory letters based on this inscrip- 
tion, which seemed to be misunderstood, that 
in later editions he changed it, adding ''who 
still abides with me." Mrs. Wallace began 
writing at an early age, both prose and verse. 
She has never collected her poems, though sev- 
eral of them, as " The Patter of Little Feet," 
written years ago, are frequently brought to the 
attention of a new audience by the newspapers. 
She has printed one book of fiction, " Ginevra " 
(1887), and three books of travel sketches, ''The 
Storied Sea" (1884); "The Land of the Pue- 
blos" (1888); and "The Repose in Egypt" 
(1888). Mrs. Wallace has a happy manner of 
describing places and incidents, and the papers 

1 General Wallace died at Crawfordsville, February 15, 1905, 
exactly live years after the death of his friend and fellow-towns- 
man, Maurice Thompson. 



CRAWFORDSVILLE I99 

in these volumes show the spontaneity and ease 
of good letters, and are without the guide-book 
taint. They were intended, as the author stated 
in the preface to "The Storied Sea," for pa- 
tient, gentle souls seeking rest " from that weart- 
ness known in our dear native land as mental 
culture." Mrs. Wallace shares her husband's 
liking for Eastern subjects, and her Egyptian 
and Turkish papers, in particular, are delightful 
reading.^ 

II. Maurice Thompson 

No other Indianian has lived so faithfully as 
Maurice Thompson a life devoted to literary 
ideals, and none of his contemporaries among 
writers of the West and South has been more 
loyally devoted to pure belles-lettres than he. 
Abstract beauty has appealed to him more 
strongly than to any other writer of the Indiana 
group, and he has expressed it in his poems, 
through media suggested by his own environ- 
ment, with charm and grace. He is a native 
of Indiana, having been born at Fairfield, near 
Brookville, September 9, 1844. His father was 
of Scotch-Irish ancestry; his maternal grand- 

1 Mrs. Wallace's life, singularly blessed, and filled with love 
and honor, ended October i, 1907. 



200 THE HOOSIERS 

father was of Dutch origin; and both lines 
were represented in the Southwestern migra- 
tion at the beginning of the century. In 
Maurice's childhood his father, who was a 
Baptist clergyman, made several changes of 
residence, all tending southward, removing first 
to southeastern Missouri, then to Kentucky, 
and again within a few years to the valley of 
the Coosawattee in northern Georgia. Here 
the senior Thompson became a planter, and 
Maurice enjoyed thereafter, until he reached 
manhood, a life in which the study of books 
was ideally blended with the freedom of the 
country. He has always expressed great obliga- 
tions to his mother's influences during these 
years; her literary tastes were sound, and 
she imparted to her children the love of good 
books, overcoming by her own encouragement 
and guidance the absence of schools in their 
neighborhood. Tutors were procured for 
higher mathematics and the languages ; but 
the chief impulse to the study of the old litera- 
tures lay in the youth's own taste, and tem- 
perament. Like Lanier, Hayne, Esten Cooke, 
John B. Tabb, and others who were to become 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 201 

known in literature, he entered the Confederate 
army (1862), and saw hard service until the 
surrender. Even these years of soldier expe- 
rience did not interrupt wholly his studies, for he 
usually managed to carry with him some book 
worth reading, the essays of De Quincey and 
Carlyle belonging to this period. Mr. Thomp- 
son returned to his father's plantation at the 
close of the war, and remained there for three 
years, continuing his studies as before, but sub- 
stituting hard manual labor for the life of pleas- 
ant adventure by field and flood that had given 
him from boyhood into early manhood an 
intimate acquaintance with wild things. He 
now began, of necessity, to accommodate him- 
self to the changed conditions of the community 
and of his own family. He had studied engi- 
neering, and he perfected himself in it, and read 
law. Reconstruction moved forward slowly, 
and wishing to get as quickly as possible into 
a region where his material prospects could 
be improved, he went to Crawfordsville, without 
fixed purpose, and found employment with a 
railway surveying party. He supported himself 
by engineering until he felt justified in taking 



THE HOOSIERS 

up the law, in which he was successful, and to 
which he was constant until the increase of 
literary reputation and steady employment in 
more congenial labor made it possible for him 
to abandon it. His marriage to a daughter of 
John Lee, an influential citizen of the county, 
fixed him as a resident of Crawfordsville, which 
has since remained his home. For a number 
of years he was prominent in local politics. 
He sat once in the State legislature, and he was 
appointed State geologist in 1885. 

Mr. Thompson had written experimentally in 
boyhood, and after his removal to Indiana he 
continued the cultivation of his gifts, and begin- 
ning slowly, attained to an abundant produc- 
tion, in both prose and poetry, that made him 
through many years the Western author whose 
name most frequently occurred in the indices of 
the best magazines. During his youth in the 
Cherokee country he had been initiated into the 
mysteries of archery by a hermit who lived iaa 
the midst of a pine forest near his home. Mr. 
Thompson and his brother. Will H. Thompson, 
were both enthusiastic archers and hunters, and 
their adventures in the wilds of Florida were full 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 20$ 

of romantic interest. The bow was with them 
a kind of protest against the shot-gun, and 
assured a less murderous extirpation of game. 
Their own skill with the primitive weapon was 
remarkable, and as a recurrence of interest in 
the bow in this country is not imminent, they 
may be considered the last of American archers. 
Proficiency in this sport and the acquaintance 
with woodcraft to which it led were important 
influences in Mr. Thompson's first literary 
work. In the seventies, a great revival in 
archery swept the country, and this was wholly 
due to a series of articles on archery and on 
hunting with the long bow which Mr. Thomp- 
son printed in the periodicals. These papers 
were gathered into a book (1878), and although 
he had published three years before a volume 
of sketches called ** Hoosier Mosaics," his 
writings on this subject, with the attractive 
title " The Witchery of Archery," gave him his 
first footing as an author. The long bow has 
again fallen into disuse, but the freshness and 
zest of those sketches have not passed away. 
However, the archer had found in his wood- 
lands more important material than he had yet 



204 THE HOOSIERS 

made use of ; for while he was following Robin 
Hood, he was also the servant of Theocritus 
and Meleager, and he wrote at this period many 
lyrics that suggested, by their spirit at least, 
the Greek pastoral poetry more than anything in 
English. They were published under the de- 
scriptive title " Songs of Fair Weather " (1883), 
and are included also in a larger volume of 
Mr. Thompson's verse, "Poems" (1892). E. 
S. Nadal writes ^ that he has never known any 
scenery so classical as the glades which border 
the forests of Ohio and Indiana. In fancy, he 
is able to people them with figures of mythology, 
and in no other spots, he says, has his imagi- 
nation been equal to this task. It is pleasant to 
find this comment running into a reference to 
Mr. Thompson : " When I was the literary 
reviewer of a New York daily," says Mr. Nadal, 
** I was always on the lookout for the verses 
of a young poet who lived in this part of the 
world. I remember that one of his poems 
related how that once when Diana was at her 
bath in some clear spring, no doubt known to 
the poet, a sort of sublimated Hoosier of the 

^ " Essays at Home and Elsewhere," p. 211. 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 20$ 

fancy, himself quite nude and classic, passed 
near by. He quickly, however, ran away far 
through the green thick groves of May, — 

"*Afeard lest down the wind of Spring 
He'd hear an arrow whispering.' " 

There is a great deal of the Indiana land- 
scape to be found through Mr. Thompson's 
poems, though he often looks southward to 
the north Georgia hills and to Florida. Ser- 
vile descriptions he does not give, but against 
backgrounds traced with great delicacy and 
beauty he throws suddenly and for a moment 
only some fleeting spirit of the woodland. 
There is in his language " the continual slight 
novelty " which is indispensable in poetry that 
is to haunt and taunt the memory. As an in- 
stance of his felicity a poem called "Before 
Dawn " may be cited : — 

" A keen, insistent hint of dawn 
Fell from the mountain height ; 
A wan, uncertain gleam betrayed 
The faltering of the night. 

** The emphasis of silence made 
The fog above the brook 
Intensely pale ; the trees took on 
A haunted, haggard look. 



206 THE HOOSIERS 

** Such quiet came, expectancy 
Filled all the earth and sky : 
Time seemed to pause a little space ; 
I heard a dream go by! " 

Such subjects he always handles finely, leav- 
ing- the thought in a spell of mild wonder and 
awe, as if something beautiful had passed and 
vanished. Similar effects were often possible 
with him in his younger days; and it is a 
question whether the moods from which such 
work proceeds recur after youth, the dream, 
has departed and taken that from the heart 
which "never comes again." Those early 
pieces could not have been written by an in- 
doors man ; there is a refreshing quality of 
the open air in every Une of them. The note 
is unusual, and is perhaps best sounded rarely ; 
lightness and deftness are necessary to him 
who would evoke its entire purity and melody. 
In "The Death of the White Heron," ''A 
Flight Shot,'' "Diana," "The Fawn," and "In 
the Haunts of Bass and Bream," he trusted 
his fortunes to rhymed couplets of eight syl- 
lables, which are particularly well adapted to 
his purposes. The last-named poem relates 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 20J 

with tantalizing deliberation the taking of a 
bass; the life of the stream pending the cap- 
ture is described in musical, transitional pas- 
sages to the refrain, — 

" Bubble, bubble, flows the stream, 
Like low music through a dream.'" 

He again employs couplets in one of the 
most appealing of all this series, " In Exile," 
which is the prayer of an archer of the new 
world that England, the mother of archers, 
will call him home. Later Mr. Thompson 
essayed a number of poems in a flexible ode 
form, showing a broadening of his powers and 
a widening of his personal horizons. The 
flight in such pieces as '' In Captivity " and 
"Before Sunrise" is longer than in the ear- 
lier poems. It is a pleasure to find a poet 
to whom America is so satisfactory as a field 
that he dares to set up the mocking-bird 
against the nightingale. Mr. Thompson makes 
the home-songster a medium for communicating 
the spirit and significance of our democracy to 
our friends overseas. The movement through 
ail these poems is free and vigorous, and the 
irregular lines please by the happy chance of 



208 THE HOOSIERS 

the rhymes. The pleasant winds of which the 
poet writes so refreshingly creep often into his 
measures. Patriotic subjects he touches with 
nobility and fervor ; and he became the lau- 
reate of reconstruction when he penned his 
ringing poem **To the South," the conclusion 
of which must not be omitted here: — 

" I am a Southerner ; 
I love the South ; I dared for her 
To fight from Lookout to the Sea, 
With her proud banner over me. 
But from my lips thanksgiving broke 
As God in battle thunder spoke, 
' And that Black Idol, breeding drouth 
And dearth of human sympathy 
Throughout the sweet and sensuous South, 
Was, with its chains and human yoke. 
Blown hellward from the cannon's mouth, 
While Freedom cheered behind the smoke ! " 

Again, when invited to read a poem before 
the Phi Beta Kappa, of Harvard, in 1893, he 
chose for his subject " Lincoln's Grave," ex- 
pressing, with greater care, similar feelings of 
loyalty, and recounting Lincoln's high qualities 
with eloquent appreciation. 

Mr. Thompson has pubHshed a number of 
novels: ''A Tallahassee Girl" (1882); "His 



CIL\^VFORDS^^LLE 209 

Second Campaign" (1882); "At Love's Ex- 
tremes" (1885); "A Banker of Bankersville " 
(1886); "A Fortnight of Folly" (1888); and 
"Stories of the Cherokee Hills" (1899), a 
volume of short tales reminiscent of slave days 
and the author's boyhood. "A Tallahassee 
Girl " is a graceful and pretty story, the scene of 
which is laid at the South, as is true also of the 
two tales that immediately followed it. They 
convey distinct impressions of phases of South- 
ern life in the early post-bellum period, and 
abound in romantic color. *' Ahce of Old Vin- 
cennes" (1900), is a captivating tale of the 
French period of Indiana histor)% closing with 
the surrender of Vincennes to Clark. The 
heroine is delightful, and Father Beret is a 
character worthy of Dumas. The book shows 
in all ways a marked advance over any previous 
prose work of this author. He has also written 
''The Boys' Book of Sports" (1886); and 
" Louisiana" (1888), in the Stories of the States 
series, and "The Ocala Boy" (1885), all for 
juvenile readers. He has written many essays 
in which some phase of literature has been 
observed from the point of view of a nature- 
p 



2IO THE HOOSIERS 

lover; and his touch in such instances is 
always light and his matter bright and stimu- 
lating. Two volumes of such papers have 
been collected, "By-ways and Bird Notes"" 
(1885) and "Sylvan Secrets" (1887). The 
scientist and the litterateur meet in his dis- 
cussions of the mind and memory of birds, and 
the anatomy of bird-song; and his essay on 
Shakespeare, written within sound of the Gulf 
of Mexico, to the accompaniment of the songs 
of mocking-birds, is wholly characteristic of 
his independence in literary matters. He has 
been one of the most courageous champions 
of the romantic as against the analytic and 
realistic. He delivered at the Hartford Theo- 
logical Seminary, in 1883, a series of lectures 
dealing comprehensively with the question of 
morality in literature, and he embodied these 
in a volume, **The Ethics of Literary Art" 
(1883). Mr. Thompson became, in 1889, liter- 
ary editor of the New York Independent, re- 
serving, however, the privilege of continuing 
his residence at Crawfordsville. His home, 
'* Sherwood Place," is on a quiet margin 
of the town, and the house has stood for 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 2 1 1 

half a century shielded from the public eye 
by native beeches and alien pines. Mr. 
Thompson's life is wholly devoted to study 
and writing. His instincts are thoroughly 
scholarly, and in some directions, as in Greek 
poetry and Old French literature, where long 
and loving study have given him special knowl- 
edge, he is an authority. He has no com- 
plaints of the world's treatment of him or his 
work, and he declares that his writings have 
been received with much more cordiality than 
they have deserved. He is exceedingly kind 
to beginners in literature, and his criticisms 
have been of benefit to many young Western 
and Southern writers. Wabash College con- 
ferred upon him, in 1900, the degree of Doctor 
of Letters.^ 

His brother. Will H. Thompson, was born 
in Missouri (1846), and the experiences of their 
youth and early manhood were similar. Will 
Thompson was a marvellous archer, and shared 
his brother's enthusiasm for hunting with 
bow and arrow. He has not been, in recent 
years, a resident of Crawfordsville, having 
removed to the State of Washington, but 

1 Mr. Thompson died at his Crawfordsville home, February 15, 
1901. 



212 THE HOOSIERS 

he wrote while in Indiana his " High Tide at 
Gettysburg," one of the few poems of the Civil 
War that has adequately expressed the spirit of 
battle and the larger meaning of the conflict. 

III. Mary H. Krout — Caroline V. Krout 

Mary H. Krout, another Crawfordsville 
author, has added to the distinction of an 
Indiana family in which an admiral, George 
Brown, and several scholars and scientists 
have appeared. In her girlhood she wrote the 
verses *' Little Brown Hands," which have en- 
joyed a vitality not always relished by the 
author, whose later and longer flights are bet- 
ter deserving of recognition. Miss Krout has 
been an indefatigable traveller, and her books 
include ''Hawaii and a Revolution" (1898), an 
account of her personal experiences in the 
Sandwich Islands during the political crisis 
that preceded annexation ; also " A Looker-on 
in London" (1899), which describes novel 
phases of English life freshly. Miss Krout 
more recently penetrated to the interior of 
China, visiting cities remote from the beaten 
track of travel. Her sister, Caroline V. Krout, 



CRAWFORDSVILLE 213 

a classical scholar of high attainment, has 
written, under the nom de plume " Caroline 
Brown," "Knights in Fustian" (1900), a novel 
of Indiana. The " knights in fustian " are 
" Knights of the Golden Circle," a treasonable 
society which menaced Indiana during the Civil 
War. The principal characters are the fatuous 
rustics, who indulge their crude taste for the 
mysterious in the secret meetings and sonorous 
ritual of the society. Miss Krout knows the 
people of her own soil thoroughly, and the 
particular type that has attracted her is set 
out in her pages with photographic accuracy. 
The tale is true to history and to the local 
life, and its literary excellence places the 
author's name high on the roll of Western 
writers. She has also written many short 
stories for the periodicals. 



CHAPTER VII 

"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END" 

The multiplication of books by Indianians 
increased steadily during the last decade of the 
nineteenth century. Much of the production 
in prose is unimportant save as it is taken in 
connection with the general rise of cultivation 
in the State, and not a little derives interest 
principally from the personality of the writers. 
Fiction attracted many during the period indi- 
cated, and the impulse in this direction has been 
attended with notable successes. The part 
played by Indiana in the Civil War has latterly 
received attention, and the newer phases of vil- 
lage life have also been treated. Local history 
has not, unfortunately, attracted the literary 
fledgling in Indiana so often as could have been 
desired, though the field is inviting, and thorough 
work of this kind is far likelier to enjoy per- 
manency than fair or indifferent fiction or medi- 
ocre verse. Criticism is naturally last to receive 
214 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 21$ 

attention, and little critical writing can be cred- 
ited to the State. It is, however, remarkable 
that so much good work is done in the several 
departments, the inference being that where so 
many are moved to make experiments, the gen- 
eral average of cultivation must be high. 

Indiana has been a kind of way station for 
many who have gained their chief distinction else- 
where. Joaquin Miller and John James Piatt 
were born in Indiana, but left in childhood, and 
Mary Hartwell Catherwood lived in the State 
for a number of years ; but these writers may 
hardly be numbered among Indiana authors. 
James Newton Matthews, an Indianian who 
has lived for many years in Illinois, has written 
much good verse, and is included in discrimi- 
nating anthologies. Lyman Abbott began his 
ministry in Indiana as pastor of the Congre- 
gational Church at Terre Haute. Both Charles 
Warren Stoddard and Maurice Francis Egan 
were members of the faculty of Notre Dame 
University at different periods. The Rev. Ar- 
thur Wentworth Eaton, a poet and writer on 
Acadian life, was once a resident of Indianapo- 
lis; and Henry F. Keenan, who wrote ''Tra- 



2l6 THE HOOSIERS 

jan " and other novels, edited the Indianapolis 
Sentinel before he became an author. The Rev. 
Bernard Harrison Nadal (i8 12-1870) held a 
professorship at Asbury University from 1854 
to 1857, and was the father of E. S. Nadal, an 
essayist whose critical papers appeal to the 
admirers of a calm and pensive style of writing. 
Miss Lucy S. Furman's "Stories of a Sancti- 
fied Town" (1896) were written at Evansville, 
though the scenes are laid in Kentucky. The 
Rev. James Cooley Fletcher, of the well-known 
Indiana family of that name, is the author of 
" Brazil and Brazilians " (1868); and his daugh- 
ter, Julia Constance, wrote, under the pen- 
name " George Fleming," the novels " Kismet " 
(1877); "Mirage" (1878); "The Head of 
Medusa "(1880); "Vestigia "(1884); and " An- 
dromeda" (1885). Both have long been absent 
from the State, Mr. Fletcher in California and 
his daughter in Italy. 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 21/ 

I. Fiction 

Booth Tarkington stands with Mr. Riley as 
the exponent of a Hoosier who is kindly, gen- 
erous, humorous, and essentially domestic. His 
novel, "A Gentleman from Indiana" (1899), 
depicts the semi-urban type that Mr. Riley so 
often celebrates in verse. Whitecapping as in- 
troduced in this story is only the coarse exploit 
of a vicious colony living on the outskirts of the 
town in which Mr. Tarkington's tale has its 
habitation. The author plainly states that his 
whitecaps are not to be confounded with vigi- 
lance committees that undertake to reform the 
morals of individuals, but that they are rowdies 
who masquerade as whitecaps merely for pur- 
poses of private mischief and vengeance. Their 
settlement resembles in some degree the " tough 
neighborhood " often found in cities. The hos- 
tility between the people of Plattville and the 
Cross Roads element dates back to the first 
movement of population on the long trail from 
North Carolina into the Ohio Valley. The Cross 
Roads folk had been evil and worthless in their 
early homes, and they carried their worst traits 



2l8 THE HOOSIERS 

with them into Indiana. Mr. Tarkington has 
followed accurately the social history of the 
good stock and the bad, illustrating the antipa- 
thy existing between the prosperous and intelli- 
gent and the idle and ignorant. The distinction 
of Plattville as a county seat of the central 
West is well established, and its indolence, 
amiability, and pride are characteristic. The 
hero is a new type of Hoosier, who has little 
kinship with the earlier people of Eggleston, or 
with the Hoosier as Riley reports him ; he is a 
native, but has experienced at an Eastern col- 
lege an intellectual change "into something rich 
and strange," and after long absence becomes 
a pilgrim of light among his own people. 

Mr. Tarkington has a perfect appreciation of 
the strength of local affection in the Hoosier, 
and also of the thoroughly American absorp- 
tion in politics which seems to be more marked 
in county seats of a few thousand inhabitants 
than in large cities. History in towns like 
Plattville is not dated, anno tirbis conditce, but 
from a political incident or the visit of a 
President ; and a national campaign is a quad- 
rennial blessing that renews in the obscurest 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 219 

inhabitant the sense of his individual respon- 
sibility to the government. Mr. Tarkington 
emphasizes the homogeneity of the Middle 
Western folk; and this is warranted fully by 
the statisticians. The people of his town live 
together like a great, kind family, who are suffi- 
cient unto themselves. He has thrown into 
the story the sincerity, affection, and loyalty 
that are their attributes ; and he adds, more- 
over, the atmosphere of the Indiana land- 
scape, with a nice appreciation of its loveliness, 
sometimes hinted and often charmingly ex- 
pressed. There is a crisp, bracing quality in 
the writing that fitly accompanies the story, 
which is, taken all in all, one of the most 
creditable novels yet written of life in the 
Ohio Valley. There is every reason why 
Mr. Tarkington should know his Indiana well, 
as his family has been prominent in the State 
for three generations, and he is a native, hav- 
ing been born at Indianapolis (1869). He 
was educated at Purdue and Princeton, receiv- 
ing from the latter the degree of A.M. in 
1898. He has also written (1900) " Monsieur 
Beaucaire," a dramatic novelette of the eigh- 



220 THE HOOSIERS 

teenth century, in which a few striking incidents 
are handled most effectively. The story has 
the charm of an exquisite miniature. 

Indiana village life has been made the sub- 
ject of careful study by Anna Nicholas, in a 
series of short stories collected under the title 
"An Idyl of the Wabash" (1899). Religious 
phenomena have greatly attracted Miss Nich- 
olas, and she has supplemented Dr. Eggle- 
ston's studies of an earlier period with her 
artistic sketches of contemporary life. The 
social importance of the church, the vagaries 
of belief in a typical Western village, and the 
intensity of the "revival" spirit are treated 
with sympathy and humor. Several of these 
tales are, between the lines, a tribute to that 
vigorous Protestant evangelization of Indiana, 
which triumphed over mud and malaria and 
carried the gospel far beyond the sound of 
church bells. Miss Nicholas has written with 
keen penetration of the suppressed tragic 
element in rural life, but without morbidity. 
Her characters are always inevitably related 
to the incidents, and she communicates with 
unfailing success a sense of the humble atmos- 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 221 

phere of her farm and village. These stories 
are distinguished by the evident sincerity of 
their purpose to reflect life honestly, and they 
are written in a straightforward manner that 
aids the impression. They illustrate anew the 
possibilities of a local literature that follows 
progressively the formative years of a com- 
munity's life. It is even now difficult to per- 
suade the present generations of Indianians 
that Dr. Eggleston's Hoosiers ever lived; and 
Miss Nicholas, Mr. Riley, and Mr. Tarkington 
have continued the story that was begun by 
their predecessor, adding chapters equally in- 
structive and valuable. 

Mary Jameson Judah's " Down Our Way " 
(1897) is not limited to a particular region, but 
combines with studies of the author's own 
Indiana, sketches of social life at the South. 
The allurements of those organizations for 
individual improvement and general reform 
that have enlisted the energies of so many 
women in recent years have appealed to Mrs. 
Judah's sense of humor; and her stories show 
a fine appreciation of the niceties of social 
perspective and proportion in Southern and 



222 THE HOOSIERS 

Western cities. The short story is happily 
adapted to the need of the casual observer of 
local life, and tales like these, which bear the 
stamp of fidelity, have an inestimable value for 
future students. 

An increasing attention to local historical 
matters has lately been marked, and an ex- 
cellent instance of this is afforded by Millard 
Cox ("Henry Scott Clark") in "The Legion- 
aries'* (1899), a story of the Morgan raid 
into Indiana. The political and social condi- 
tions on the Indiana-Kentucky border during 
the Civil War were interesting, and worthy 
of the study that has been given to them in 
this novel. The military episode of which 
Morgan was the chief figure, though slight 
in comparison with the larger movements of 
the war, was dramatic and daring, and it lends 
itself well to this romantic setting. Mr. Cox 
is a native Indianian (1856). 

James A. Wickersham, an Indiana educa- 
tor, has analyzed certain religious conditions 
minutely in "Enoch Willoughby " (1900). 
This is a novel of character rather than of 
incident, and marks still another departure in 



«0F MAKING MANY BOOKS" 223 

method among writers of the Indiana group. 
The tale is not wholly indigenous, as the char- 
acters belong as truly to one State as to another 
of the Middle West. The Willoughbys are 
studied as a family in which peculiarities 
have always been observed, and in Enoch 
an hereditary " queerness " is manifested in 
religious idiosyncrasies. 

The revival of interest in romantic fiction, 
that marked the closing years of the century, 
witnessed the unusual successes of a number 
of novels by American authors. One of the 
most popular romances of this period is ** When 
Knighthood was in Flower" (1898), by Charles 
Major, a native of Indianapolis (1856), who is 
living at Shelbyville, twenty miles distant from 
the capital.-^ Mr. Major served no apprentice- 
ship as an author; this romance was his first 
book. He was educated in the Indiana public 
schools and at the University of Michigan, 
and was actively engaged in the practice of 
law when he wrote the novel, as a diversion, on 
his Sunday afternoons at home. The friendli- 
ness of the English-reading public to this tale 
is not difficult to understand. It is a love story 

1 Mr. Major wrote a number of other books of wide popular- 
ity, including " The Bears of Blue River " and " Dorothy Ver- 
non." He died February 13, 191 3. 



224 THE HOOSIERS 

whose chief characters, Charles Brandon and 
Mary Tudor, possess those qualities of youth, 
vivacity, and spirit that so inevitably win the 
heart in fiction or the drama. The tale is 
told by Sir Edwin Caskoden, a master of the 
dance at the court of Henry VIII., and not by 
the author direct, — a familiar trick of the his- 
torical novelist ; and it serves an excellent pur- 
pose, affording a valid excuse for the ostensible 
editor to render the sixteenth-century narra- 
tive of Caskoden into racy nineteenth-century 
English. This novel is one of the noteworthy 
achievements of Indianians in the field of 
romance, suggesting again what has been so 
true of General Wallace, — that the imagination 
is superior to all laws, and that the romantic 
vision easily pierces barriers of circumstance. 
George Cary Eggleston, a brother of Edward, 
was born at Vevay (1839), received his prelim- 
inary education in the schools of Vevay and 
Madison, and attended Asbury University, but 
did not complete his course there. When still 
under seventeen he took charge of a school in 
a wild district of the State, but at the end of 
his engagement he went to Virginia to the old 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 225 

homestead of his father's family, completed his 
college course, studied law, and served in the 
Confederate army. He has for many years 
been a well-known New York journalist, and he 
is the author of many books. He has always 
maintained relations with his native State, and 
has utilized his knowledge of it in his writings. 
In his novel "A Man of Honor" (1873), the 
hero is an Indiana boy, the son of a Kentucky 
mother and a Virginia father, as was the case 
with Mr. Eggleston himself. Another novel, 
"Juggernaut" (1891), opens in Indiana. A 
Hoosier boy is the hero, and the description of 
his early life among the hills of southern Indi- 
ana is pleasantly reminiscent of the author's 
own experiences. In a number of juvenile 
stories, among them being '' The Last of the 
Flat-boats" (1900), Mr. Eggleston has drawn 
upon his recollections of Hoosierdom, and there 
is, he says, something of Indiana in everything 
that he has written. Before Mr. Eggleston had 
seriously begun literary work the name of his 
brother Edward was so identified with Hoosier 
soil that the younger man could hardly invade 
it with literary intent without risking the charge 
Q 



226 THE HOOSIERS 

of imitation ; yet it is significant of the tenacity 
of his early impressions that throughout his 
life the scenes of his childhood and youth have 
continued to invite his imagination.^ 

II. History and Politics 

It is a pleasure to include George W. Julian 
(i8 1 7-1899) among those who have added lus- 
tre to Indiana's name. He was born at Center- 
ville, Wayne County, of Quaker parents who 
had followed the familiar line of march from 
North Carolina to Indiana. He worked in the 
fields, studied by the light of the fireplace, taught 
school, read law, and in general experienced those 
vicissitudes and embarrassments that beset so 
many ambitious American youths of his genera- 
tion. The law was a stepping-stone to politics, 
and from 1840 until the last years of his long 
life he was constantly an eager observer of 
political movements when not an active par- 
ticipant in campaigns. He was a founder and 
leader of the Free-soil party, and was its candi- 
date for the vice-presidency on the ticket headed 
by John P. Hale in 1852. He was repeatedly 
elected a representative in Congress, first as a 

1 He died April 14, 191 1. 



«0F MAKING MANY BOOKS" 22/ 

Free-soil candidate, and thereafter as a Republi- 
can, from what was known as " the burnt dis- 
trict" in eastern Indiana, serving through the 
Civil War. He was a vigorous opponent of 
slavery, and his "Speeches on Political Subjects" 
(1872), for which Lydia Maria Child wrote an 
introduction, is a record of his radical opposi- 
tion that began in 1850 and continued to the 
close of the rebellion. His integrity of opinion 
was unimpeachable. He was a laborious student, 
and, although without the graces of oratory, he 
was an impressive and effective speaker. He 
shared the ignominy that was visited upon Love- 
joy, Phillips, Giddings, and others of the early 
antislavery phalanx, and his Congressional cam- 
paigns were marked by bitter and violent abuse 
from his opponents. His powers of invec- 
tive made him a formidable antagonist. When 
his severity was criticised, he would say that 
"there is nothing in my speech but the truth 
that hurts." He was essentially a reformer and 
an independent, and broke fearlessly with his 
party when he could not conscientiously follow 
it. Thus he joined in the Liberal Republican 
movement, and supported Greeley. He then 



228 THE HOOSIERS 

became, and remained to the end of his life, a 
Democrat, and was appointed by Mr. Cleveland 
surveyor-general of New Mexico. He made 
his home for thirty years at Irvington, a suburb 
of Indianapolis and the seat of Butler College, 
where he was the village Nestor. He delighted 
in literature, lived among books, contributed 
often to the periodical press, and wrote (1892) 
the " Life of Joshua R. Giddings." 

Civic interests have marked also the career 
of WilUam Dudley Foulke, who was born in 
New York City (1848) and educated at Co- 
lumbia College, being graduated in 1869. Mr. 
Foulke's antecedents were Quakers, and he 
removed, in 1876, to Wayne County, one of the 
principal centres of the Society of Friends 
in Indiana. Mr. Foulke practised law and sat 
in the State senate (1883- 1885) as a Repub- 
lican, but became an independent upon the 
nomination of Mr. Blaine, and thereafter gave 
his attention to various political reforms, nota- 
bly in the civil service, conducting investiga- 
tions and frequently delivering addresses. He 
published (1887) " Slav and Saxon," an essay 
on the future of the two races which are. 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 229 

in his belief, to contend finally for suprem- 
acy in the world. He gave many years to 
the study of the war period in Indiana, with 
a view to writing the life of OHver P. Morton, 
Indiana's "War Governor," who had been a 
citizen of Wayne County ; and this biography 
(1899) is not only a thorough study of Mor- 
ton's public services, but of the period to 
which he belonged as well. 

Early associated with Mr. Foulke in civil 
service reform work in Indiana was Oliver T. 
Morton (i 860-1 898), the son of Governor Mor- 
ton, who was born in Wayne County and edu- 
cated at Yale and Oxford. His volume of 
essays, "The Southern Empire" (1892), con- 
tains, besides the title paper, an historical es- 
say on Oxford and an excellent discussion of 
civil service reform. The opening essay is a 
most suggestive presentation of the slavehold- 
ers' ambitions to found a vast tropical slave 
empire. It is of interest to read this, in the 
light of the senior Morton's herculean efforts 
against slavery ; but that one generation may 
easily differ from another is proved by the 
concluding essay in advocacy of the merit sys- 



230 THE HOOSIERS 

tern, which found few friends in the period 
of which Senator Morton was a dominating 
figure. 

Mr. Foulke's brother-in-law, Arthur Middle- 
ton Reeves (i 856-1 891), found employment 
for his scholarly tastes in unusual channels. 
After his graduation from Cornell (1878), he 
devoted himself to the study of Icelandic lan- 
guage and lore, in which his interest had been 
aroused by Professor Willard Fiske; and he 
subsequently continued his studies abroad in 
Europe and Iceland. He was an industrious 
and painstaking student, with a passion for 
accuracy, and the volume of his letters col- 
lected and published for his friends shows 
him to have possessed unusually varied tal- 
ents. He wrote ''The Finding of Wineland 
the Good: The History of the Icelandic Dis- 
covery of America" (1890); *' Lad and Lass : 
Story of Life in Iceland" (1890); "Jan: A Short 
Story" (1892); and he had begun, with Dr. 
Valtyr Gudmundsson of Copenhagen, a trans- 
lation of the Laxdcela Saga when, on the 
occasion of a visit to his home in Indiana, 
he was killed in a railway accident. 



«0F MAKING MANY BOOKS 



251 



The first Indiana historian was John B. 
Dillon, who was born at Wellsbiirg, West Vir- 
ginia (1808), learned the printer's trade, and 
removed to Indiana in 1834. While resi- 
dent at Logansport he studied law and was 
admitted to the bar ; but his quiet, studious 
habits and natural reserve unfitted him for 
the practice, and he never tested his powers. 
He turned, fortunately, to the study of Indi- 
ana's history ; and appreciating the importance 
of assembling data before the death of wit- 
nesses and participants, began collecting ma- 
terial, and published (1859) a ''History of 
Indiana," covering the period from the first 
explorations to 1856. This work represents 
many years of laborious research in a field 
that was practically untouched. It is the 
point of departure for all who study Indiana 
history, and it is as exact as diligent care 
could make it. Dillon published '' Notes on 
Historical Evidence in Reference to Adverse 
Theories of the Origin and Nature of the 
Government of the United States" (1871); and 
at his death left the manuscript of a work 
called " Oddities of Colonial Legislation." 



232 THE HOOSIERS 

He received a number of minor appointments 
under the Federal government, residing at 
Washington from 1863 to 1875. He returned 
to Indianapolis at the termination of these 
employments and died there, in 1879. He 
was gentle, patient, modest, and industrious, 
a man of merit, faithful in all things. He 
never married, and had no interests save those 
of the student. His proper place was in the 
quiet alcoves of libraries ; and it must always 
be remembered to his credit that with little 
encouragement, and for the love of the labor, 
rather than for any reward, he gave many 
laborious years to the task of establishing 
the State's place in history. 

Jacob P. Dunn, who wrote " Indiana : A 
Redemption from Slavery," in the American 
Commonwealth series (1888), employed criti- 
cal methods that were not known in Dillon's 
day. His work deals with a brief period, and 
with events that had not previously been 
viewed in their proper perspective. He brought 
to bear upon his subject a scientific analysis 
and an exhaustive research that show especial 
fitness for historical writing. His descriptions 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 233 

of the early French habitant are delightfully 
written, and give a distinct impression of 
the first white settlers of the Wabash. Mr. 
Dunn has written also *' Massacres of the 
Mountains" (1886), an account of the Indian 
wars of the West, which is noteworthy for 
its thorough treatment of the Mountain 
Meadows incident. It is a standard work 
of reference, and one of the most popular 
books catalogued in Western libraries. Mr. 
Dunn served a term as State librarian, and 
has been for many years tireless in pro- 
moting interest in libraries for rural commu- 
nities. He was born at Lawrenceburg (1855), 
and was graduated (1874) from Earlham Col- 
lege. 

John Clark Ridpath (1840- 1900), one of the 
most prolific of Indiana authors, was born in 
Putnam County and was graduated from Asbury 
University, with which he was subsequently 
connected in various teaching and administra- 
tive capacities for many years. He was a 
most successful teacher, particularly of history. 
Besides many text-books he published "A 
Cyclopaedia of Universal History" (1885); 



234 THE HOOSIERS 

"Great Races of Mankind" (1894); "Life 
and Memoirs of Bishop William Taylor " 
* (1895) ; and many monographs on historical 
and biographical subjects. 

Richard G. Boone's " History of Education 
in Indiana" (1892) is one of the most impor- 
tant books in the State's bibliography. Mr. 
Boone is also the author of " Education in the 
United States" (1894). He was for ten years 
identified with the common schools of Indiana, 
and for seven years held the chair of peda- 
gogics at Indiana University, resigning to 
become superintendent of schools at Cin- 
cinnati. 

"The Puritan Republic" (1899), by Daniel 
Wait Howe, shows further the grasp of newer 
methods in historical writing, and is distin- 
guished by thorough treatment and judicial 
temper. It would seem that nothing could 
be added to the literature of this subject, 
which has attracted so many skilled histo- 
rians ; but Judge Howe adduced much new 
material and presented the old and familiar 
in an orderly and attractive manner. This is 
a thorough and exact work, which has taken 



«0F MAKING MANY BOOKS" 235 

rank with the accepted authorities. Judge 
Howe is entitled to his word on the Puritan, 
as his ancestors were among the pioneers 
of Sudbury, Massachusetts. He was bom 
in Switzerland County (1839), was graduated 
from Franklin College, served four years in 
the Civil War as an Indiana soldier, and 
enjoyed the unusual distinction of sitting for 
fourteen years continuously as a judge of the 
Superior Court at Indianapolis. He has con- 
tributed valuable essays to the publications 
of the Indiana Historical Society. 

William H. Enghsh (i 822-1 896) gave many 
years to a study of the life and services of 
George Rogers Clark, and produced (1896) 
"Conquest of the Country Northwest of the 
River Ohio, and Life of George Rogers Clark," 
an elaborate work in two volumes, which is a 
veritable encyclopaedia of facts. As Clark had 
been one of the neglected figures in American 
history, the preparation of his biography was 
in the nature of a public service. Mr. English 
is also the author of an historical and biographi- 
cal work on the Indiana constitution. He was 
born in Scott County, and received his educa- 



236 THE HOOSIERS 

tion in the public schools and at Hanover 
College. He served as a representative in 
Congress (i 853-1 861), and in 1880 was the 
Democratic candidate for vice-president on 
the ticket with Hancock. 

*' Early Indiana Trials and Sketches " (1858) 
is a racy record of the personal experiences of 
Oliver H. Smith (i 794-1 859), who had a kind 
of Boswellian instinct for the interesting. As a 
lawyer he " rode circuit " with Miles Eggleston, 
David Wallace, James Rariden, John Test, and 
others famous in the early days; and no one 
has written of these men with nicer apprecia- 
tion of their high qualities. He was elected a 
senator in Congress in 1836, and served for one 
term. 

William Wesley Woollen (1828) has also 
added to the literature of local biography. 
His "Biographical and Historical Sketches of 
Early Indiana" (1883) contains information 
that is nowhere else accessible, and it is, more- 
over, a well-written and entertaining volume. 

David Demaree Banta (183 3-1 896) wrote 
often and well on subjects of local history, and 
his " Historical Sketch of Johnson County " 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 237 

(1881) shines amid the dreary waste of Indiana 
County histories. It contains a rare fund of 
information touching pioneer life in general, 
and reflects in some degree the personality of 
the accomplished and versatile author, who was 
a fine type of the native Hoosier. 

III. Miscellaneous 

The press of Indiana has aided greatly in the 
State's intellectual advance. In the larger 
towns the newspapers have usually been well 
written, and many of them have extended sym- 
pathetic encouragement to beginners in author- 
ship. Many Western writers found their first 
friendly editors at the offices of the Herald or 
Journal at Indianapolis. John H. Holliday, G. 

C. Matthews, Anna Nicholas, Elijah W. Halford, 
Charles Richard Williams, A. H. Dooley, Lewis 

D. Hayes, Morris Ross and Louis Rowland are 
among those who, in the hurried labors of 
daily newspaper-making, have found time to 
preach the gospel of " sweetness and light " 
through the Indianapolis press. High on the 
roll of Indiana journalists whose talents are 
especially deserving of remembrance is Berry R. 



238 THE HOOSIERS 

Sulgrove (i 827-1 890), who was born at Indian- 
apolis, attended local schools, learned the sad- 
dler's trade, and worked for a short time as a 
journeyman. His aptness and love of learning 
had attracted attention, and in 1847 ^^ was 
enabled to enter Bethany College, West Vir- 
ginia, then under the presidency of the famous 
Alexander Campbell. His preparatory studies 
at the " Old Seminary " of Indianapolis had 
been so thorough that he was graduated at the 
end of one year with all the honors of the col- 
lege, and dehvered his commencement oration 
in Greek. He studied law and practised for 
a few years, but became connected with the 
Journal in 1854, and was thereafter identified 
with the press of Indianapolis. He possessed 
an extraordinary memory that was a source of 
constant amazement to his friends and associ- 
ates. His information in many departments of 
knowledge was both extensive and exact, and 
he retained, to the end of his Hfe, his interest 
in pubHc matters, foreign and domestic. He 
wrote with precision and grace, and his use of 
homely, local illustrations added to the interest 
and force of what he had to say. Now and 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 239 

then a Macaulay-like roll would sound in his 
sentences; and he would frequently imitate 
Macaulay's rhetorical tricks, as by declaring, 
with conscious humor, that some local event 
had ''never been equalled between the old 
bridge and the bayou"; but he wrote usually 
without affectation, and his prodigious memory 
made possible a variety of suggestion and illus- 
tration that never failed to distinguish his work. 
During many years he was at different times 
a contributor of editorial matter to all of the 
Indianapolis newspapers, extending his field at 
intervals to the Chicago and Cincinnati dailies. 
He wrote usually at his home, and latterly had 
no desk in any newspaper office, though a 
member of the News staff to the end of his 
life. His manuscript was famous among West- 
ern printers, who encountered it at Cincinnati, 
Indianapolis, and Chicago, and in the day of 
Mr. Sulgrove's greatest activity seemed unable 
to escape from it. He wrote habitually on the 
backs of old election tickets, on scraps of pro- 
grammes, on bits of paper picked up on his 
country walks, but never by any chance on a 
clean new sheet designed for the purpose. 



240 THE HOOSIERS 

His handwriting was microscopic, but perfectly 
legible, carefully punctuated, and free from 
erasure. A slip the length and breadth of the 
hand might contain half a column. No more 
interesting figure than he ever appeared in 
Indiana journalism ; but his ambitions were not 
equal to his talents, and he was long an obscure 
figure in the city of his birth, whose intimate 
history he knew familiarly. His " History of 
Indianapolis and Marion County" (1884) con- 
tains only slight hints of his superior abilities. 
His contemporary, George C. Harding (1829- 
1881), was a native of Tennessee, but gave the 
best years of his life to journalism at Indianapo- 
lis. He was a student of human nature rather 
than of books, but his literary instincts were 
true, and in the two weekly newspapers, the 
Herald and the Review, which he conducted, 
he was at once the inspiration and the terror of 
his contributors. Some of the sketches in a 
volume of his " Miscellaneous Writings" (1882) 
show an agreeably humorous turn. He had the 
trained journalist's appreciation of condensed 
wisdom. It was his habit to repeat, week after 
week, a satirical paragraph in which some indi- 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 24 1 

vidual was pilloried until the victim's name 
became a by-word and a hissing in the com- 
munity. Sometimes this served a moral pur- 
pose ; again the intention was purely humorous. 
Years ago a candidate for constable, who was 
also a delegate to the nominating convention 
held at Indianapolis, received therein exactly 
one vote. The question, "Who voted for Dau- 
benspeck.'* " was thereupon reiterated weekly in 
the Herald, until it passed permanently into a 
phrase of local speech. 

Angelina Teal's " John Thome's Folks " 
(1884), and "Muriel Howe" (1892); Margaret 
Holmes's "Chamber Over the Gate" (1886); 
Martha Livingstone Moody's " Alan Thorne " 
(1889); Harriet Newell Lodge's "A Bit of 
Finesse" (1894); many excellent short stories 
by Helen Rockwood Edson, literary essays by 
Harriet Noble and Kate Milner Rabb, and Ida 
Husted Harper's " Life and Work of Susan B. 
Anthony," emphasize the part that women have 
played in the State's literary achievement. The 
Rev. Charles R. Henderson, of Lafayette, a 
member of the faculty of Chicago University, 
has been a prolific writer on sociological sub- 



242 THE HOOSIERS 

jects. John Augustine Wilstach, also of La- 
fayette, has busied himself with philological 
studies. He translated Virgil (1884) and Dante 
(1888), and coincidently with the publication of 
these versions issued critical reviews of the 
literature touching his subjects. The text of 
Lucian was edited for school use (1882) by 
Charles Richard Williams, who became an In- 
dianapolis journalist; and Demarchus C. Brown 
translated selections of Lucian into English 
(1896). George Ade, who discovered fresh sub- 
jects for materialistic fiction in Chicago, was 
born in Indiana and educated at Purdue, as was 
also his illustrator, John T. McCutcheon. Mr. 
Ade has a touch all his own, and his character 
studies are thoroughly original. He and Hector 
Fuller, another Hoosier writer of short fiction, 
show how the journalist may successfully turn 
his hand to book-making. William P. Fish- 
back, one of the founders of the Indianapolis 
Literary Club, has published (1895) his " Recol- 
lections of Lord Coleridge," with whom he en- 
joyed a delightful acquaintance ; and another 
member of the club, Augustus Lynch Mason, 
wrote ** Romance and Tragedy of Pioneer Life" 



"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 243 

(1883). Benjamin Harrison's public services 
cannot obscure the fact of his authorship of 
"This Country of Ours" (1899), a capital ac- 
count of the functions of the several depart- 
ments of the Federal government. 

That form of humorous writing which has 
become a feature of American journalism, and 
which is, moreover, a sharply critical commen- 
tary on contemporaneous American life, not to 
be rejected lightly, is also produced in great 
volume in Indiana. This goes to the public 
anonymously, but Emma Carleton, R. D. Ste- 
venson C Wickwire"), and Wood Levette Wil- 
son are among those whose dialogues, para- 
graphs, and jingles constantly appear in many 
publications. S. W. Gillilan, who wrote " Fin- 
nigan to Flannigan," the verses in Irish dia- 
lect which have become a kind of American 
railway classic, is an Indianian. 



CHAPTER VIII 

AN INDIANA CHOIR 

I. Early Writers 

The specific talent necessary to the expres- 
sion of local life is much rarer than the ability 
to write of life in the abstract. If the knack 
of writing accompanied a sensibility to the life 
that lay nearest, we should long ago have had 
an abundant American literature descriptive of 
conditions that have passed and will not, in 
the very nature of things, recur. But the line 
of impressionability may not be controlled ; and 
though many protests have been launched 
against minor American poets for looking be- 
yond the robin to the nightingale, the rejection 
of the near continues, though in a diminishing 
degree. The early poets of the Ohio Valley did 
not often approach closely to the Western soil ; 
they lacked insight and courage and their work 
was usually not interesting. When they occa- 
sionally essayed a Western subject, they were 
244 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 245 

unable to bring to bear upon it any novelty of 
treatment ; it was all " icily regular, splendidly 
null." William T. Coggeshall states in the 
preface to his " Poets and Poetry of the West " 
(1864) that in the early years of the nine- 
teenth century " soldiers, hunters, and boatmen 
had among them many songs descriptive of 
adventures incident to backwoods life, some of 
which were not destitute of poetic merit; but 
they were known only around campfires, or 
on * broadhorns ' " (flat-boats), and tradition, he 
adds, preserved none worthy to be included in 
his anthology. But these racy songs would 
have been of greater value than much of the 
verse that he has preserved in his pages, 
though as a part of the history of development 
this, too, is not to be spurned. Coggeshall's 
work includes notices of ninety-seven men and 
fifty-five women. Twenty-three of the total 
he attributes to Indiana by reason of residence, 
and thirteen of the number were natives of 
the State. Only a small proportion of the 
poets named by Coggeshall survived, though 
the writers of the biographical notes accom- 
panying his selections were cordial and anxious 



246 THE HOOSIERS 

to confer immortality. William D. Ho wells and 
John J. Piatt are included, and Mr. Ho wells 
wrote several of the sketches. It is diverting 
to read the opinion of Mr. Howells's biographer 
that "some of his prose sketches are quite 
equal in grace of conception and individuality 
of treatment to any of his poems." He was 
then twenty-seven. 

Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky, were 
early rivals for literary prominence at the West : 
one was the seat of Cincinnati College, the 
other of Transylvania University. Many books 
were published at Lexington before 1825, 
and The Medley^ or Monthly Miscellany^ which 
appeared there in 1803, is believed to have 
been the first magazine published west of the 
Alleghanies. Hunt's Western Review, which 
was formerly regarded as the pioneer, dated 
from 18 19, and was also a Lexington publica- 
tion. Lexington dropped out, and Louisville 
fell into place as a defender of the literary 
faith with the advent of George D. Prentice, 
who became the ardent champion of the muses 
in the Ohio Valley. The headquarters of poets 
for this region was the office of the Louis- 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 247 

ville Journal during Prentice's reign, and all 
of the Coggeshall poets laid the tribute of 
their song before him. To paraphrase Bishop 
Butler's remark about the strawberry, quoted 
by Walton, doubtless Prentice might have de- 
clined a poem or discouraged a poet, but 
doubtless he never did. He was not an exact- 
ing critic, and he encouraged many who were 
without talent ; but he took away the reproach 
of the neglected and unappreciated, and now 
and then he found a few grains in the chaff 
to pay him for his trouble. 

The Literary Gazette, which appeared at 
Cincinnati in 1824, with the motto "Not to 
display learning, but to excite a taste for it," 
numbered Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, of Vevay, 
among its contributors; and she was the first 
Indiana writer to become identified with the 
group of aspirants that now began to appear 
along the Ohio. The prospectus of another 
Western Review, published at Cincinnati for 
three years from May, 1827, declared that 
"we are a scribbling and forthputting people. 
Little as they have dreamed of the fact in 
the Atlantic country, we have our thousand 



248 THE HOOSIERS 

orators and poets." However this may have 
been, "the Atlantic country" invaded the 
Ohio Valley in 1835, when the Western 
Messenger was begun at Cincinnati, under 
the auspices of the Western Unitarian Asso- 
ciation. It was edited first by the Rev. 
Ephraim Peabody, and later, at Louisville, by 
James Freeman Clarke. Clarke left Louisville 
in 1840, and the Messenger was continued at 
Cincinnati by the Rev. W. H. Channing. John 
B. Dillon represented Indiana in its table of 
contents, and found himself in good company, 
with Emerson, William Ellery Channing, Jones 
Very, and C. P. Cranch. The periodical was, 
as Venable calls it, "an exotic — a Boston 
flower blooming on the Ohio," and it ceased 
to appear in 1841. In the same year, the 
Ladies' Repository made its appearance at Cin- 
cinnati, under Methodist auspices, and was pub- 
lished continuously for thirty-six years. Mrs. 
Dumont, Mrs. Sarah T. Bolton, Miss Mary 
Louise Chitwood, Mrs. Rebecca S. Nichols, 
Mrs. A. L. Ruter Dufour, Horace P. Biddle, 
and Isaac H. Julian were the principal Indiana 
contributors. The number of Indiana writers 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 249 

increased steadily, and the Genius of the West, 
a Cincinnati magazine dating from 1855, ex- 
tended the list to include the names of Ben- 
jamin S. Parker, John B. Dillon, and Louise 
E. Vickroy. Peter Fishe Reed, also a con- 
tributor to the Geniiis of the West and similar 
magazines of the period, combined farming 
with literary experiments near Mount Vernon 
(Indiana), and lived for a time at Indianapolis. 
The majority of these pioneer periodicals lived 
only a short time, and the Civil War brought 
a final interruption to most of them ; they 
passed out with the "annuals," whose literary 
flavor was similar. Indiana's ante-bellum writ- 
ers usually looked to Louisville and Cincinnati 
for publicity, and no serious effort was made 
to establish literary magazines within the State. ^ 
It curiously happened, however, that Emerson 
Bennett, a voluminous producer of "penny 
dreadfuls," published a literary paper called 
the Casket, at Lawrenceburgh (1846), but soon 
abandoned it. The patient research of Ven- 
able discovered the Western Censor, published 

1 " Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley," by 
W. H. Venable, LL.D., p. 58 et seq. 



250 THE HOOSIERS 

at Indianapolis in 1 823-1 824, and The Family 
Schoolmaster, which had a brief existence at 
Richmond in 1839. ^-^^^ Querist was con- 
ducted by Mrs. Nichols for a few months at 
Cincinnati in 1844, and Henry Ward Beecher's 
Indiana Farmer and Gardener was begun at 
Indianapolis in 1845, but removed to Cincin- 
nati in the following year. Beecher's contri- 
butions to this paper were the nucleus of his 
book " A Pleasant Talk about Fruits, Flowers, 
and Farming." The Literary Messenger is 
credited to Versailles, 1854. 

Coggeshall included among the Indianians in 
his anthology William Wallace Harney, who was 
born (1832) at Bloomington, where his father was 
a professor in Indiana University ; and William 
Ross Wallace, born (1819) at Lexington, Ken- 
tucky, and educated at Bloomington and Han- 
over colleges ; but as the literary life of both 
began after they had left the State, they may 
hardly be catalogued as Indiana authors. The 
Rev. Sidney Dyer, a native of New York State 
(18 14), was for a number of years (i 852-1 859), 
a Baptist minister at Indianapolis. He is the 
author of a number of books, and his writings 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 25 1 

include many popular songs and poems. Isaac 
H. Julian, a native of Wayne County (1823), 
and the brother of George W. Julian, hardly 
added subsequently to the reputation he had 
gained prior to the pubUcation of Coggeshall's 
book, and the same is true of Granville M. 
Ballard, who was born in Kentucky (1833), 
and after his graduation from Asbury Uni- 
versity became a resident of Indianapolis, where 
he is still living. Horace P. Biddle, born in 
Ohio (18 1 8-1900), removed at an early age 
to Indiana, where he became prominent in 
affairs, and held many public offices before 
his retirement. He aided in the early efforts 
in behalf of common school education, and was 
a diligent student and writer. Noble Butler 
is placed in Kentucky's list of early writers, 
though his residence at Hanover gives Indiana 
a claim upon him. He frequently translated 
German poetry and wrote original verse occa- 
sionally ; but the fugitive essays of his nephew, 
Noble C. Butler, of Indianapolis, are better lit- 
erature. Coggeshall includes also Jonathan W. 
Gordon and Henry W. Ellsworth, of Indianapo- 
lis, whose contributions to the literature of the 



252 THE HOOSIERS 

period were slight and without distinction. 
Ellsworth was a native of Connecticut and a 
graduate of Yale (1834). Amanda L. Ruter 
Dufour ( 1 822-1 899) and Laura M. Thurston 
(18 1 2-1 842) are properly included among In- 
diana's early poets. The latter wrote the lines 
"On Crossing the Alleghanies " and '' The Green 
Hills of My Fatherland," which are above the 
average in the collection and were once much 
applauded. George W. Cutter, whose " Song of 
Steam," beginning, — 

'" Harness me down with your iron bands ; 
Be sure of your curb and rein, " — 

was once in favor, lived in Indiana, and sat in 
the General Assembly. He died at Washing- 
ton in 1865. Rebecca S. Nichols was long 
associated with the little band of writers who 
printed verses and tales in Louisville and 
Cincinnati publications, and her literary in- 
stincts were truer than those of most of her con- 
temporaries. She is still living at Indianapolis. 
A mournful interest attaches to the work of 
Mary Louise Chitwood, who was born at Mount 
Carmel, October 29, 1832, and died there 
twenty-three years later, sincerely mourned 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 253 

by the whole choir of Western poets. Prentice 
had encouraged her, and he wrote a memoir to 
accompany a volume of her verses that appeared 
in 1857. Her work promised well, though it 
shared the defects of most of the verse of the 
day. 

Sarah T. Bolton is one of the most interesting 
figures in Coggeshall, and though born in Ken- 
tucky (1820), her long life was spent principally 
in Indiana. Her husband, Nathaniel Bolton, 
edited the first newspaper ever published in 
Indianapolis. Mrs. Bolton began writing at an 
early age, and through many years it may be 
said that she stood for poetry in Indiana. Many 
of her poems are stiff and formal and show little 
originality; but often her pieces are free and 
spontaneous, and she had humor, which most 
of the early poets of the West lacked. Her 
last volume (i 891) is dedicated "To the poets 
of Indiana, my children after the spirit." 
She was known to Willis and Morris, of the 
Knickerbocker group contemporary with her. 
Her husband was appointed consul at Geneva 
in 1855, and she lived for a number of years 
abroad, finding fresh material for poems in her 



254 THE HOOSIERS 

travels. She died at Indianapolis in 1893. 
Her best-known poem is " Paddle Your Own 
Canoe." She was a loyal Indianian and wrote 
the lines : — 

" The winds of Heaven never fanned, 
The circling sunlight never spanned 
The borders of a better land 
Than our own Indiana." 

Benjamin S. Parker, of all the poets dis- 
covered in Indiana by Coggeshall, acquired 
the greatest skill in versification, and wrote 
most comprehensively of the pioneer life. He 
was born on a farm near New Castle (1833), 
and is one, at least, to whom the phrase 
"racy of the soil" needs no explanation. He 
lived in a log-cabin, performing the hardest 
farm labor, and long observation of life at 
the West made him an authority in matters 
of customs and dialect. His volume "The 
Cabin in the Clearing " (1887) contains many 
poems in which the trials of the earUer set- 
tlers are graphically depicted, and it was his 
right, as one who had aided in the rough 
work of the pioneers, to urge the new gen- 
erations to use worthily the opportunities 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 255 

which they inherited. Of the fauna and flora 
of his own woodlands Mr. Parker became the 
especial celebrant. The following lines from 
one of his most graceful pieces are character- 
istic of his happiest moods: — 

" I had a dream of other days, — 

In golden luxury waved the wheat ; 
In tangled greenness shook the maize ; 

The squirrels ran with nimble feet, 
And in and out among the trees 

The hangbird darted like a flame ; 
The cat-bird piped his melodies, 

Purloining every warbler's fame : 
And then I heard triumphal song, 
'Tis morning and the days are long." 

Mr. Parker felt, more than any other poet 
of the Ohio Valley, the grandeur of the vast 
woodlands as the pioneers found them, and 
he has touched upon it constantly in his writ- 
ings. He lived for several years in Canada, 
as a consular officer, and wrote a series of 
poems under Northern influences ; but he has 
been most fortunate in subjects derived from 
home experiences. He is a connecting link 
between the earliest Indiana writers and their 
successors, and he has been one of the hum- 



256 THE HOOSIERS 

blest and most devoted and sincere of all the 
servants of literature in his State. 

II. Forceythe Wills on 

It is an abrupt transition from these pio- 
neers of poesy to Forceythe Willson, the only 
Indiana poet who ever came in contact 
with the New England group. Emerson, in 
the preface to his "Parnassus" (1874), says, 
" I have inserted only one of the remarkable 
poems of Forceythe Willson, a young Wis- 
consin poet of extraordinary promise, who died 
very soon after this was written." The poem 
chosen was " In State." This placing of Will- 
son in Wisconsin is, as Piatt says in his elo- 
quent sketch of the poet,^ rather needless, for 
he was never connected with Wisconsin in 
any way. He was born at Genesee Falls, 
New York, April 10, 1837. In 1846 his father 
removed to Kentucky, and in 1852 to New 
Albany. Willson spent about a year at Anti- 
och College, in Ohio, and went afterward to 
Harvard, but left in his sophomore year, 
owing to ill health. His home was in Indi- 

1 Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 35. 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 25/ 

ana from 1852 to 1864. He wrote his best 
poems, indeed the greater part of his slender 
product, at New Albany, and his residence 
there, in immediate contact with the seat of 
war, colored his distinctive work. He married, 
in 1863, Elizabeth Conwell Smith, whom he 
had met the preceding year at New Albany, 
and whose literary gifts created a bond of 
sympathy between them. They removed 
shortly to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where 
one of Willson's brothers was in school. He 
purchased a house on the Mount Auburn 
road, near Lowell's home, with an outlook 
on the Charles River. James R. Gilmore 
(Edmund Kirke) was his neighbor and saw 
much of him at Cambridge. He wrote, in 
1895, his recollections, testifying to Willson's 
unusual qualities, and giving this description 
of his personal appearance : — 

" Take him, all in all, he was the most lovable man I 
ever knew ; and as a mere specimen of physical manhood 
he was a joy to look at. A little above the medium height, 
he was perfectly proportioned and of a sinewy, symmetrical 
figure. His hair was raven black, wavy, and glossy as satin. 
His skin was a light olive, slightly tinged with red, and his 
features were regular, somewhat prominent, and exceed- 



258 THE HOOSIERS 

ingly flexible, showing an organization of a highly sensitive 
character. But his eyes were what riveted the observer's 
attention, Mr. Longfellow told me they were the finest 
type of the Oriental, but I never saw eyes — Eastern or 
Western — to compare with them in luminous power. 
They were full, large, and dark, with overhanging lashes ; 
but for the life of me I cannot tell their precise color. At 
times they seemed a deep blue, at other times an intense 
black, and then they were balls of fire, as he was stirred by 
some strong emotion. They spoke the ready language of 
a deep, strong, fiery, yet chastened, nature as it was moved 
by love, joy, sorrow or indignation."^ 

Piatt remarks upon his ''Oriental look and 
manner," and all who knew him were impressed 
by his distinguished appearance and grave cour- 
tesy. In 1858 New Albany became interested 
in spiritualism. Willson fell under the spell and 
began a study of the subject. Piatt says that 
Willson " soon abandoned the professors, but 
retained until his death a serious spiritual theory 
or faith of his own. He believed — and he was 
absolutely honest and sincere, I am sure, in his 
faith — that the spirits of the dead could, and at 
times do, have communication with the living." 

Willson seems not to have had an active occu- 
pation at any time. His father had been success- 

1 Indianapolis News, March 2, 1895. 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 259 

ful in business, and dying at New Albany in 
1859, left a comfortable fortune to his children. 
The poet lived by himself for a number of years, 
at New Albany, in a small house where he sur- 
rounded himself with books and led the life of 
a student. Louisville is directly across the Ohio 
from New Albany, and Willson was known to a 
few of the literary people on the Kentucky side, 
particularly to Prentice. The approach of the 
Civil War aroused in him a deep interest in its 
great issues, and he wrote editorials in support 
of the Union cause for Yx^\s!C\z€^ Journal. He 
began in the first year of the war, and concluded 
later, his poem " In State," which, in spite of its 
occasional vagueness and its despairing view of 
the political situation, is written in an effective 
stanza and is splendidly imaginative. He gloom- 
ily assumed that the nation was dead — hence 
his personification of it as a prone figure lying 
"in state," and he brings the rulers of Europe 
to look upon it, — 

" The winds have tied the drifted snow 
Around the face and chin ; and lo, 
The sceptred giants come and go 

And shake their shadowy crowns and say : '■ We 
always feared it would be so ! ' " 



26o THE HOOSIERS 

There is hardly a stanza in the poem that does 
not contain some striking image. It moves on 
in the mournful cadence of a miserere : — 

" The Sisterhood that was so sweet, 
The Starry System sphered complete, 
Which the mazed Orient used to greet. 

The Four and Thirty fallen Stars glimmer and 
glitter at her feet." 

He published, January i, 1863, as a carrier's 
address in the Louisville Journal, " The Old 
Sergeant," which Piatt believed to have been 
" the transcript of a real history, none of the 
names in it being fictitious, and the story being 
reported as exactly as possible from the lips of a 
Federal assistant surgeon named Austin, with 
whom Willson was acquainted at New Albany." 
The poem appeared anonymously, and for some 
reason, which was never explained, Willson 
seemed reluctant at first to admit its authorship. 
It attracted wide attention. Gilmore relates 
that early in 1863, in the office of the Atlantic 
Monthly y he met Dr. Holmes, who held in his 
hand a copy of the homsville /otirnal, containing 
"The Old Sergeant." " Read that," said he, 
" and tell me if it's not the finest thing since the 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 26 1 

war began. Sit down and read it here ; you 
might lose it if I let you take it away." The 
ballad is found in " The Old Sergeant and Other 
Poems " (1867). It is a vivid narrative of sus- 
tained power and interest, deriving strength from 
the earnestness of the recital and the simple 
language, sometimes descending to army slang, 
of the soldier. The poem is historically accurate 
and is a fine celebration of the battle of Shiloh : 

"There was where Lew Wallace showed them he was of 
the canny kin, 

There was where old Nelson thundered, and where Rous- 
seau waded in ; 

There McCook sent 'em to breakfast, and we all began to 
win — 
There was where the grapeshot took me, just as we 
began to win. 

" Now, a shroud of snow and silence over everything was 

spread ; 
And but for this old blue mantle and the old hat on my 

head, 
I should not have even doubted, to this moment, I was 

dead — 
For my footsteps were as silent as the snow upon the 

dead ! " 

There is a suggestion of Poe, whom Willson 
greatly admired, in the repetition, with slight 



262 THE HOOSIERS 

variation, of the third line of the stanza; but 
such points Willson always considered care- 
fully. He was certainly not servilely imitative, 
and he is an ungenerous critic who would 
pick flaws in a poem that is so fine as a whole. 
"The Old Sergeant" is entitled to a place with 
the best poems of the war — with Mrs. Howe's 
" Battle Hymn," Brownell's stirring pieces, Will 
H. Thompson's ''High Tide at Gettysburg," and 
Ticknor's " Little Giffen." These stand apart 
from Lowell's ** Commemoration Ode" and simi- 
lar poems, which are civic rather than military. 
In "The Rhyme of the Master's Mate," Willson 
turned again to the heroic, and while the poem 
is less artistic than " The Old Sergeant," it has 
a swing and a stroke that fit his theme well. 
His volume contains a number of mystical 
pieces, colored by his belief in spiritualism, 
and a few lyrics, as " The Estray " and 
"Autumn Song," which have an elusive charm 
and increase admiration for his talents. Will- 
son was emphatically a masculine character. 
In literature and in Ufe he hked what he 
called "muscle," and he certainly showed a 
sinewy grasp in his best poems. It is related 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 263 

that once during the war he organized, and 
armed at his own expense, a home guard to 
protect New Albany in a dangerous crisis, and 
at other times he displayed great personal 
courage. If it had not been for his ill health 
he would undoubtedly have enlisted. 

Willson was not immediately identified at 
Cambridge as the author of "The Old Ser- 
geant." As Dr. Holmes said after Willson's 
death, ** He came among us as softly and 
silently as a bird drops into his nest," and it 
was not like him to call attention to his own 
performances. After the death of his wife 
and infant child, October 13, 1864, Willson 
was often at Gilmore's house, where he first 
saw Emerson. Gilmore relates that he re- 
turned home one day from Boston to find 
Lowell lying at full length on a lounge in the 
library, in animated conversation with Willson. 
On this occasion an incident occurred illustra- 
tive of Willson's gift of "second sight." Long- 
fellow was mentioned in the conversation, and 
Willson remarked that the poet would be there 
shortly. No one had an intimation of the visit, 
but Willson described the route that Longfel- 



264 THE HOOSIERS 

low was then following toward the house; and 
when the poet presently arrived, he affirmed 
the statement of his itinerary as Willson had 
given it. Willson' s interest in life ended with 
the death of his wife, whose few poems he pub- 
lished privately. She is remembered at New 
Albany as a girl of great beauty and refinement. 
Willson left Cambridge in the fall of 1866 
for New Albany. While there he suffered 
hemorrhages of the lungs and was ill for a 
month. He never regained his strength, and 
his death occurred February 2, 1867, at Alfred, 
New York. His convictions as to spiritualism 
grew firmer after his wife's death, and toward 
the last, so one of his brothers wrote, " his wife 
and child seemed to be with him constantly, 
and he talked to them in a low voice." He 
was buried at Laurel, the home of Mrs. Will- 
son's family, in the White Water Valley. His 
wife and child lie in one grave beside him. 
The quiet hilltop cemetery commands a view 
of one of the loveliest landscapes in Indiana, 
and it is fitly touched with something of the 
peace, strength, and beauty that are associated 
with Willson's name. 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 265 

III. Later Poets 

Willson marked the beginning of better 
things, and a livelier fancy and a keener criti- 
cal spirit is henceforward observable — in the 
writings of a veteran like Parker, and in the 
new company of writers that was forming. The 
Civil War had profoundly moved the Central 
States, and Indiana had perhaps felt it more than 
her neighbors. Willson had lifted his voice for 
the Union while the war cloud still lay upon the 
land, and the Thompson brothers spoke for 
the South from Indiana soil on the arrival of 
the era of better feeling. Ben D. House, who 
had served in the Federal armies, wrote with 
truth and spirit. He ran away from his home 
in Vermont when he was seventeen, and en- 
tered the army from Massachusetts. He saw 
hard service, and received wounds which were 
a constant menace for the remainder of his life. 
He was mustered out finally at Indianapolis, 
and lived there almost continuously until his 
death in 1887. His idiosyncrasies and affec- 
tations were many, and included the wearing of 
a great cloak, in which he sombrely wrapped 



266 THE HOOSIERS 

himself in cold weather. His poems were 
printed privately by his friends in 1892. He 
had fair luck with the sonnet, and wrote, on 
the occasion of Grant's death, "Appomattox," 
which follows : — 

" To peace-white ashes sunk war's lurid flame ; 
The drums had ceased to growl, and died away 
The bark of guns, where fronting armies lay, 

And for the day the dogs of war were tame, 

And resting on the field of blood-fought fame, 
For peace at last o'er horrid war held sway 
On her won field, a score of years to-day. 

Where to her champion forth a white flag came. 

O nation's chief, thine eyes have seen again 
A whiter flag come forth to summon thee 

Than that pale scarf which gleamed above war's stain, 

To parley o'er the end of its red reign — 
The truce of God that sets from battle free 

Thy dauntless soul, and thy worn life from pain." 

Lee O. Harris, a native of Pennsylvania 
(1839), removed to the State in 1852, and was 
an Indiana soldier in the Civil War. His verse, 
as collected in "Interludes" (1893), shows little 
of the military feeling, but is strongly domestic, 
a forerunner of the work of Mr. Riley, whose 
teacher Mr. Harris had been at Greenfield. 

Dan L. Paine, an Indianapolis journalist 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 267 

(i 830-1 895), possessed a sound taste, and his 
occasional pieces were well executed. He 
wrote an elegy on the death of his friend and 
fellow-journalist, George C. Harding, which is 
a meditation on the courage of such spirits : — 

" On Freedom's heights they stand as sentinels, 

Brave tropic suns, delve in earth's deepest caves, 
And climb the ladder of the parallels 
To sleep in icy graves." 

Such felicities were not uncommon with him. 
He was the friend and helpful critic of all the 
younger Indiana writers, and Hterary reputa- 
tions have been created from slighter talents 
than his. His poems were collected privately, 
under the title "Club Moss" (1890). 

So far nearly every name identified with the 
literary impulse in Indiana has been met south 
of a line drawn across the State at Crawford s- 
ville ; but Evaleen Stein carried it farther north, 
to Lafayette. Miss Stein's verse illustrates 
happily the growing emancipation of the 
younger generation of Western poets from 
bare didacticism, and an escape from the 
landscape of tradition. She finds her sub- 
jects in nature, and draws pictures for the 



268 THE HOOSIERS 

pleasure of it, and not with the expectation 
of tacking a moral to the frame. Earnestness 
and conviction characterize her verses, and 
there is often a kind of exultance in the note 
when she sings of the rough hill pastures or the 
marshes and bayous that invite her study. She 
has something of Thoreau's genius for details, 
and her volume " One Way to the Woods " 
(1897) is an accurate calendar of the moods of 
nature. Her work marks really a new genera- 
tion, the change of fashion, and the passing of 
the ante-bellum poets of the region. Twenty 
years earlier no Ohio Valley poet would have 
explored a bayou, or could have written of it 
so musically as Miss Stein : — 

" Ah, surely none would ever guess 
That through that tangled wilderness, 

Through those far forest depths remote, 
Lay any smallest path, much less 

A way wherein to guide a boat ! " 

A small volume of the poems of M. Gene- 
vieve Todd ( 1 863-1 896), of the order of Sis- 
ters of Providence, was published after her 
death. They are wholly devotional, and are 
marked by elevation of spirit wedded to cor- 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 269 

rect taste. Sister Mary Genevieve was born 
at Vevay, of Protestant parents, and died at 
the convent of St. Mary's of the Woods near 
Terre Haute. Albion Fellows Bacon, Mrs. 
D. M. Jordan, Richard Lew Dawson, and Will- 
iam R. Williams have also been creditable 
contributors to the Hoosier anthology. 

Indiana offers, on the whole, a fair field for 
poets. The prevailing note of the landscape 
is tranquillity. There is hardly a spot in the 
State that touches the imagination with a 
sense of power or grandeur, and yet there 
are countless scenes of quiet beauty. The 
Wabash gathers breadth and grace as it flows 
southward. Long curves here and there give 
to the eye the illusion of a chain of lakes, and 
the river's valley is a rich garden. The Tip- 
pecanoe is another beautiful river, famous 
among fishermen, and there are a number 
of charming lakes in the northern part of 
the State. The Kankakee marsh was long 
haunted by the migrant wild birds, and in 
recent years a wild goose was found there 
with the piece of an Eskimo arrow, made of 
reindeer bone, through its breast. Poets and 



270 THE HOOSIERS 

novelists have found inspiration in the Kan- 
kakee. Maurice Thompson and Evaleen Stein 
have celebrated the region in song ; and there 
is a tradition that the manuscript of " Ben 
Hur" visited both the Kankakee and Lake 
Maxinkuckee at certain crises in its prepara- 
tion. The possibilities of mixed forests are 
nowhere more happily illustrated than in 
Indiana, whether in the earliest wistful days 
of spring or in the full glory of autumn. 
The beech and the elm, the maple, the 
hickory and the walnut, and the humbler 
sassafras and pawpaw are companions of a 
royal order of forestry, from which the syca- 
more — the self -constituted guardian of rivers 
and creeks — is excluded by nature's decree 
confirmed by man's preference. The variety 
of cereals that may be grown saves the tilled 
areas from monotony. There are no vast 
plains of corn or wheat as in Kansas or the 
Dakotas, but the corn ripens between wheat 
stubble on one hand, and green pastures or 
remnants of woodland on the other. The 
transitional seasons bring more of delight to 
the senses than the full measure of winter 



AN INDIANA CHOIR 2/1 

and summer, and have for the observer con- 
stant novelty and change. There are quali- 
ties in the spring of the Ohio Valley — 
qualities of sweetness and wistfulness that 
are peculiar to the region; and when the 
winds are all from the south, and the win- 
ter wheat is brilliant in the fields ; when the 
sap sings beneath the rough bark of the old 
forest trees, and the young orchards are a blur 
of pink and white, spirits are abroad there 
with messages for the sons of men. 



CHAPTER IX 

A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 

It is a pleasant experience to find a book 
that was cast upon the waters fifteen years ago 
brought back to shore by a friendly tide. As 
the preface of 1900 indicates, the preceding 
pages were written in exile — an exile that ter- 
minated within a year or so after the book was 
published. I question whether, but for the home- 
yearning that afflicted me during that period, I 
should have spent upon my task the amount of 
time and labor I gave to it. While my original 
commission looked only to a report upon In- 
diana's adventures in literature, it seemed proper 
and necessary to show the many difficulties that 
beset the pioneers in their struggles to attain 
" sweetness and light," to indicate a background 
against which the story-tellers, poets, and chron- 
iclers might be limned. 

State pride covers, we are told, a multitude of 
sins. In perusing the foregoing pages for the 
272 



A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 2/3 

first time since the proof left me, I am relieved to 
find that I have been guilty of so little that is 
vain and boastful ; and now that this postscript 
seems called for, I hope to avoid spoiling the 
effect I sought in the first instance by any ill- 
considered flourishes. 

Indiana now approaches her centenary, and 
the student of democracy may, I think, scruti- 
nize with a degree of satisfaction the movements 
and processes by which the State continues 
on her way as an enlightened member of the 
American sisterhood. It is not without regret 
that many of us who heard at the feet of our 
elders the story of early hardships, the austeri- 
ties of pioneer life and the meagre opportunities 
afforded to those who sought learning, realize 
that we have now climbed so far that the State is 
losing — indeed, has lost — much of its tang and 
native flavor. This was, of course, unavoidable, 
and we may only be grateful that so much of 
the color and spirit of the old times have been 
preserved by Indiana writers. The achievement 
of this end is the highest justification of a local 
literature. Many good and noble lives have 
gone to the making of a State that was literally 



274 THE HOOSIERS 

hewn out of the wilderness, and it is to be hoped 
that the interest in Indiana history which pre- 
sumably will be aroused by the jubilee year, may 
turn the thoughts of the new generation upon 
the untableted and forgotten pioneers who never- 
theless are deserving of grateful remembrance. 

The newspaper paragraphers who have made 
merry at the expense of the Hoosier ** group " of 
writers have not always appreciated fully the 
true significance of Indiana's literary activity. 
Certainly the elements and circumstances that 
favor the cultivation of the creative arts have 
rarely been so lacking anywhere as they were 
in early Indiana. As I have tried to show, it 
was not merely a question of overcoming natural 
difficulties, but of meeting obstinate hostility as 
well. Those who express at times their distrust 
of democracy may, I think, find much in In- 
diana's history to console them. I shall not 
pretend that in politics we have always been 
wise, nor attempt to extenuate errors of omis- 
sion and commission, but the spectacle of self- 
government offered by the Hoosiers has been, 
and remains, reassuring. The phenomena dis- 
cussed in these chapters have been succeeded 



A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 275 

by Others equally vital and important. I at- 
tempted to describe the coming of the light when 
" light " connoted generous fireplaces and tallow 
candles. Now that electricity illuminates the 
smallest town, the student must not too con- 
descendingly look back upon those of the elder 
day who '' lived lean " that we of these later 
times might dwell in contented ease upon the 
soil they won for us. 

When I wrote my chapter on ** The Rural 
Type and the Dialect" I hoped that some hos- 
tile critic would feel moved to point out my 
errors and lay the groundwork for a thorough 
study of Hoosier folk speech. The trolley and 
the automobile are so rapidly breaking down 
the old community barriers that many of the 
local peculiarities I knew as a boy are already 
vanishing. As I write these lines I learn that 
Guido H. Stempel, associate professor of Com- 
parative Philology in Indiana University, has 
initiated what promises to be the most scientific 
study of Indiana dialect that has yet been un- 
dertaken. The preliminary inquiry looks to the 
definition of zones in which marked influences 
are apparent, as the Western reserve, the main 



2/6 THE HOOSIERS 

current of Western immigration from New- 
York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and the Pied- 
mont "thrust" from the South. The active 
work is in charge of Myrtle Emmert Stempel, 
with the cooperation of many scholars and 
teachers throughout the State. 

The " social consciousness " with which we 
were not concerned in old times is now a factor 
in the State's affairs, and many thoughtful stu- 
dents have manifested an interest in the new 
problems. Since I wrote of the distribution of 
population and emphasized its essential Ameri- 
can character, the races of southern and south- 
eastern Europe have begun to filter into Indiana, 
markedly in the larger cities and along the curve 
of Lake Michigan. Gary is unique among in- 
dustrial centres in that it did not grow but was 
literally created upon sand dunes and swamps. 
It was begun in 1906 and to-day its population 
is estimated at 40,000. It is cheering to note 
that its first building was a school house. The 
effort made to fashion for Gary a system of 
public education that should meet the town's 
peculiar social needs has caused the eyes of the 
educational world to be fixed upon this new com- 



A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 277 

miinity. Indiana is proud to enroll as a Hoosier 
William A. Wirt, the superintendent of Gary's 
schools, whose ideas and ideals have lately pro- 
voked wide discussion. Mr. Wirt was born near 
Markle, and attended the Bluffton high school 
and De Pauw University. 

Quite as significant and valuable as her ex- 
cursions in literature are Indiana's endeavors in 
the field of education. The public schools of to- 
day realize in fullest measure the hopes of those 
educational pioneers who fought so valiantly 
from the beginning for free schools. The State 
University, as the cap-sheaf of the system, has 
so widened its influences that it is now a valued 
force in the State's life; its sister institution, 
Purdue University, is recognized as one of the 
best technical schools in America. The State's 
provision has been generous, and both institu- 
tions have enjoyed admirable management. In 
Wayne County, on a day last spring, I watched 
a group of farmers, many of them old men, re- 
ceiving instruction in the choice of seed corn 
from one of Purdue's teaching staff. In view 
of the old contemptuous dismissal of "book 
larnin' " by practical farmers, it struck me as 



2/8 THE HOOSIERS 

amusing that even men bred to the soil now 
gladly avail themselves of the scientists' aid. 
When the Hoosier farmer goes to Purdue for a 
winter " course " he takes his wife with him, 
that she may receive instruction in the house- 
hold arts or in, any other field that appeals to 
her. 

In old times the State's sanitary conditions 
were indubitably bad; the inhabitants spent 
much of their time shaking with the ague, or 
in combating other ills with patent nostrums. 
Drainage combined with a noteworthy advance 
in medical standards has rescued the Hoosier 
from many of the perils that once beset him. 
Indiana has profited greatly by the services of 
John N. Hurty, who, as secretary of the State 
Board of Health, probably has made more en- 
emies and saved more lives than any other man 
who ever lived within the borders of the com- 
monwealth. It is creditable to the State that 
he has held this office, which he did not seek in 
the first instance, for twenty years continuously 
— an evidence that pubHc sentiment has cor- 
dially supported him in his labors. To improve 
the conditions in which a people live, and to 



A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 2/9 

increase their efficiency and happiness by mini- 
mizing the hazards of life is, I should say, as 
noble an achievement as the taking of a city or 
the writing of a book. In this connection I 
shall not apologize for mentioning Harvey W. 
Wiley, long government chemist, whose zealous 
efforts in behalf of pure food have endeared 
him to all of his countrymen who are inclined to 
be considerate of their stomachs. Dr. Wiley 
was born and educated in Indiana. 

The temptation is strong upon me to make 
the approaching centenary an excuse for widen- 
ing the scope of this postscript; but I must 
hold a tight rein upon my exuberance. Indi- 
ana has sent so many of her sons and daugh- 
ters to other States to win honor and renown 
that there is danger of arousing animosity by 
"claiming" a host of natives who have lent 
their energy and genius to other communities. 
When asked on an occasion why so many great 
men " come " from Indiana, George Ade vouch- 
safed no explanation, but remarked that the 
greater the men, the faster they came ! While 
Mr. Ade repudiated this aspersion, it serves to 
emphasize Indiana's generosity in bestowing 



280 THE HOOSIERS 

genius upon other commonwealths. Although 
Harrison remains Indiana's one president, there 
are always " possibilities " awaiting the people's 
call : and the office of vice-president seems to be 
conceded to belong to Hoosierdom. Schuyler 
Colfax was elected on the ticket with Grant in 
1868; Thomas A. Hendricks with Cleveland in 
1884 after being defeated with Tilden in 1876. 
William H. English was Hancock's running- 
mate in 1880 and was defeated. Charles War- 
ren Fairbanks was elected with Roosevelt in 
1904, and while John W. Kern shared Mr. 
Bryan's defeat in 1908, Thomas R. Marshall 
again brought the honor to Indiana in 191 2. 
Indiana has not yet been recognized by an ap- 
pointment to the United States Supreme Court, 
though at least one native, Willis Van Devanter 
(born at Marion in 1859, and a graduate of 
De Pauw), won this honor for another State. 
The fact that a State whose illiteracy was so 
dismaying only a little while ago should have 
produced many writers of reputation is not 
more humorous than that it should also have 
mothered two eminent librarians. John Shaw 
Billings who attained distinction as a surgeon 



A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 28 1 

in the Civil War became the first director of the 
New York Public Library. He was a native 
of Switzerland County, in which Edward Eg- 
gleston was born. Dr. Billings' many honorary 
degrees included Oxford's coveted D. C. L. He 
was succeeded at his death by his assistant, 
Edwin Hatfield Anderson, a native of Boone 
County, and a graduate of Wabash College. 

Many who have gone far in literature left 
Indiana before they could be enrolled among 
her writers. Among these may be mentioned 
William Vaughn Moody, a native of Spencer 
(1869-1910), who took rank as one of the most 
distinctive of American poets, and whose un- 
timely death will long be regretted. Still In- 
diana may shine in the reflected light of the 
genius that flowered in the ''Ode in Time of 
Hesitation," "Gloucester Moors," and other 
poems of rare quality. Theodore Dreiser 
(1871), one of the sincerest exponents of the 
realistic school of fiction, was born at Terre 
Haute and educated in the schools of Warsaw 
and at the State University. George Barr Mc- 
Cutcheon, author of many dehghtful romances, 
was born close to the Tippecanoe and is still 



282 THE HOOSIERS 

proud to stand up and be counted whenever 
the Hoosier roll is called. He is a diligent 
hunter of rare books and owns a valuable 
library of first editions. His brother, John T. 
McCutcheon, best known as a cartoonist, has 
made a reputation as a war correspondent and 
traveler, and has written a sprightly narrative 
of his adventures in quest of big game in the 
African jungle. 

Booth Tarkington, whose earlier books have 
already been mentioned, has maintained the 
position he took at the start as a writer of 
quality. He is the most cosmopolitan of Indiana 
authors but still continues his residence in the 
city of his birth. A style of unusual charm and 
grace, a rare gift of characterization, and an 
astonishing versatility distinguish his work, 
which has grown steadily in breadth and power. 
Besides his many books he is the author of 
a number of successful plays, and of these, 
"The Man from Home" (done in collaboration 
with Harry Leon Wilson), held the stage for 
several seasons. Mr. Tarkington's father, John 
Stevenson Tarkington, an Indiana lawyer and 
soldier, has employed his leisure in literary 



A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 283 

work. His " Hermit of Capri " (1910) shows a 
pleasant fanciful vein that is wholly individual. 
New writers have appeared in an intermi- 
nable line in these fifteen years, and I must 
repeat the discreet reservation of the preface to 
cover omissions that are enforced by the limita- 
tions of space. One of the most popular of 
American novelists is Gene Stratton Porter, 
whose books, including ''The Song of the 
Cardinal," ''Freckles," "A Girl of the Limber- 
lost," "The Harvester," and "Laddie," have 
endeared her to thousands of readers. Mrs. 
Porter's writings reflect her love of the country- 
side and a sympathetic understanding of simple, 
homely character. Like Maurice Thompson, 
she is an accomplished ornithologist, and bright 
wings beat constantly through her pages. She 
was born on a farm in Wabash County, and her 
manuscripts are dated from Limberlost Cabin, 
near Rome City. Elizabeth Miller (Hack), a 
native of Montgomery County, has shown 
marked originality in her choice of subjects for 
fiction. Her first novel, " The Yoke," deals with 
earliest biblical times, and is remarkable for 
its vividness and freshness of treatment. She 



284 THE HOOSIERS 

followed this with *' Saul of Tarsus," " The City 
of Delight," and "Daybreak." "Judith, A 
Story of the Candle-lit Fifties," by Grace 
Caroline Alexander, reproduces the atmosphere 
of old Indiana times most attractively. 

While Annie Fellows Johnston has elected 
to cross the Ohio into Kentucky for residence, 
mention should be made of her numerous stories 
for young people, which have won for her a 
wide and loyal constituency. And this record 
would be incomplete if it failed to name again 
Mrs. Johnston's sister, Albion Fellows Bacon, 
whose labors in behalf of housing reform in 
Indiana have attracted wide attention. While 
sharing her sister's literary interests, she is best 
known and will long be remembered for her 
courageous battle for tenement laws. 

Modesty, a trait sometimes denied the Hoosier 
by envious outsiders, is the happy possession of 
the author of "In My Youth" (1914), a novel 
(if such indeed be its proper classification) that 
reflects vividly the pioneer days of Central 
Indiana. The unknown writer has laid a debt 
upon all lovers of the State in this charming 
chronicle. 



A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 285 

David Graham Phillips, well known as a 
journalist and novelist, was born in Madison. 
He received his early education in Indiana, 
but did not begin writing until his removal 
to New York, where he died in 1911. Max 
Ehrmann, a native of Terre Haute, has followed 
the muse in the spirit of truth and sincerity, and 
he is the author of many poems of beauty and 
significance. Robert Alexander Wason, though 
born in Ohio, overcame this handicap as quickly 
as possible by crossing the border into Indiana, 
where he spent his formative years. Among 
his books are '' Happy Hawkins," " The Steer- 
ing Wheel," and "The Knight Errant." 

Marjorie Benton Cooke, a native of Wayne 
County, is the author of *' Dr. David," " Banbi," 
and other volumes of prose and verse and is 
well known as a dramatic reader. 

The State University has exerted a stimulat- 
ing influence upon literary endeavor. The list 
of books written by faculty and alumni is long 
and awaits a special bibliographer. William 
Lowe Bryan, the president, a native of Bloom- 
ington, has written, with his wife's collabora- 
tion, "Plato the Teacher," and "The Republic 



286 THE HOOSIERS 

of Plato with Studies for Teachers." William 
A. Rawles is the author of " The Government of 
the People of the State of Indiana" (1897) and 
" Centralizing Tendencies in the Administra- 
tion of Indiana " (1903). James Albert Wood- 
burn has written " The American Republic 
and Its Government," " Life of Thaddeus 
Stevens," and many other books. Born at 
Bloomington (1856), he has served the State 
long and faithfully as a teacher, and he has 
participated in many movements for good 
government. Samuel Bannister Harding, the 
son of George C. Harding, one of the most 
brilliant of Indiana editors, has written much 
in his own field of history. Will D. Howe, 
of the department of EngHsh, has led many 
"to the things that are more excellent," and 
his text-books and in particular his edition of 
Hazlitt speak for scrupulous scholarship and 
sincere devotion to the humanities. 

Charles W. Moores, of a family identified 
from the beginning with the best life of the 
State, is a lawyer who has made literature his 
recreation. He has written admirable biogra- 
phies of Lincoln and Columbus for young 



A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 287 

readers. Mr. Moores is an authority on Lin- 
coln's personal and political history, and his 
volume on the great president is distinguished 
for accuracy and ease and charm of narrative. 
Another Hoosier, Jesse William Weik, has 
written (with William H. Herndon) a " Life 
of Lincoln," in two volumes. Mr. Weik owns 
a large and valuable collection of Lincoln 
manuscripts. Julia Henderson Levering's " His- 
toric Indiana" (1909) contains much material 
that is nowhere else accessible, and her volume 
reflects Mrs. Levering's wide acquaintance 
with Hoosier people and traditions. 

When I visited New Harmony in 1900 to 
examine the records left by Owen and his suc- 
cessors, I learned that George B. Lockwood 
was at work on a history of the Owens and 
their experiment in socialism. He very gen- 
erously placed at my disposal the data he had 
collected, and of this I made use in my chapter 
on New Harmony in this volume. It gives 
me pleasure to direct all who are interested 
in this subject to Mr. Lockwood's books, "The 
New Harmony Communities" (1902) and '* The 
New Harmony Movement" (1905), which are 



288 THE HOOSIERS 

the fruits of many years of laborious research. 
New Harmony's centenary was fittingly cele- 
brated in 19 14. Former President Taft and 
Governor Ralston were among the speakers, 
and the occasion was otherwise made memorable 
by a noble pageant, the inspiration of Miss 
Charity Dye. 

The unusually varied and interesting career 
of John W. Foster finds expression in his 
** Century of American Diplomacy" (1900), 
"American Diplomacy in the Orient" (1903), 
and "Diplomatic Memoirs" (1909). General 
Foster was born in Pike County in 1836. He 
was Secretary of State in Harrison's cabinet, 
succeeding James G. Blaine, and has held im- 
portant diplomatic positions. Albert J. Bev- 
eridge, a senator in Congress for two terms 
(1899-1911), is the author of "The Russian 
Advance" (1903), "The Young Man and the 
World" (1905), "The Meaning of the Times" 
(1907), and a biography of John Marshall not 
yet completed. Frederick Landis, a member 
of a family long identified with Indiana pol- 
itics, has made several successful excursions in 
fiction. He is the author of " The Glory of 



A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 289 

His Country" (1910) and ''The Angel of Lone- 
some Hill" (1910). 

I purposely omitted reference to Indiana's 
interest in the fine arts in the preceding pages, 
but it seems proper to mention a few Hoosier 
painters who have won much honor for them- 
selves and the State. Of these Theodore C. 
Steele has loyally maintained his residence in 
Indiana, serving art long and devotedly. He 
has interpreted the Indiana landscape with rare 
fidelity, and his example and instruction have 
been an inspiration to many younger men. 
Others whose names must be included even 
in this passing reference, are William Forsyth, 
J. Ottis Adams, Richard B. Gruelle, Otto Stark, 
J. E. Bundy, Wayman Adams, Lucy Taggart, 
and Ruth Pratt Bobbs. It may be said that the 
strongest sympathy has existed between Indiana 
writers and painters, and the wielders of the 
brush have in several instances shown marked 
writing ability. 

On her one hundredth birthday Indiana may 
render an account of her stewardship with a 
good conscience and a pardonable pride. In 
peace and war she has been a loyal member 



290 THE HOOSIERS 

of the Union. Her citizens have stood stead- 
fastly for sound ideals of government amid 
many disturbances of the equilibrium; she 
has governed herself well and has wielded no 
small influence in national affairs. She has 
contributed men and women of character and 
genius to every department of human activity, 
and in cultural fields their attainments often 
have won the crown of fame. Increasing re- 
spect, bordering upon affection, attends the 
name Hoosier (once employed in reproach !) 
wherever it may be spoken. 

A typical American State is this Indiana. 
Her earliest laws were written in the generous 
impulses and liberty-loving hearts of her first 
citizens, who turned toward the wilderness with 
rifle, axe, and Bible, to realize in their own Hves 
the best that has been thought and done in 
the world. 



INDEX 



Abbott, Lyman, 215. 
Adams, J. Ottis, 289. 
Adams, Wayman, 289. 
Ade, George, 242, 279. 
Alexander, Grace Caroline, 283. 
Anderson, Edwin Hatfield, 280. 
" Artemus Ward," 159. 

Bacon, Albion Fellows, 269, 284. 
Bagehot, Walter, 158, 178. 
Banta, D. D., 75, 236. 
Baptists, organized first church, 

67. 
Beales, at New Harmony, 132. 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 18, 83, 

250. 
Beecher, Mrs. H. W. 35, 56. 
"Ben Hur," how written, 189, 

193 ; Ivis, of, 270. 
Benjamin, Park, 19. 
Bennett, Emerson, 248. 
Bernard, Duke of Saxe- Weimar, 

113, 115- 
Beveridge, Albert J., 288. 
Biddle, Horace P., 248, 251. 
BiUings, John Shaw, 280. 
Blackford, Isaac, 22, 83. 
Blake family, 18. 
Blake, James, 83. 
Bobbs, Ruth Pratt, 289. 
Bolton, Nathaniel, 253. 
Bolton, Sarah T., 253. 
Boone. Richard G., 234. 
Booth, Newton, 16. 
Brook Farm, Robert Owen visits, 

123. 



Brookville, 12. 

Brotherton, Ahce Williams, 13. 
Brown, Admiral George, 212. 
Brown, Demarchus C, 242. 
Brown, Paul, at New Harmony, 

115. 119. 
Bryan, William Lowe, 285. 
Bull, Ole, 19. 
Bundy, J. E., 289. 
Bush, Rev. George, 66. 
Butler College, 26, 83, 95, 228. 
Butler, John M., 179. 
Butler, John Maurice, 179. 
Butler, Noble, 16, 251. 
Butler, Noble C, 251. 
Butler, Ovid, 82. 

Cambridge, 13. 

Campbell, Alexander, 123, 238. 
Carleton, Emma, 243. 
Carleton, Will, 172, 
Canington, H. B., 179. 
Cartwright, Peter, 67. 
Catherwood, Mary Hartwell, 215. 
Centerville, 12, 
Century Magazine, 14, 
Channing, W. E., 24? 
Channing, W. H., 241 
Chase, W. M., 12. 
Child, Lydia Maria, 227. 
Chitwood, Mary L., 248, 252. 
"Christian Endeavor," origin of 

name, 144. 
Civil Service Chronicle, 26. 
Clark, George Rogers, 4, 5. 
Clarke, James Freeman, 248. 



291 



292 



INDEX 



Coburn, John, 83. 

Coe family, 18. 

Coggeshall, W. T., 245, 250, 251. 

Colfax, Schuyler, 280. 

Cooke, Marjorie Benton, 285. 

Corydon, 11, 94. 

Costume at New Harmony, 113. 

Cox, Millard, 222. 

Cox, Sandford C, 36. 

Craig, George, 134. 

Cranch, C. P., 248. 

Crawfordsville, 8, 177, 267. 

Cutter, George W., 252. 

Dale, David, 102. 
D'Arusmont, Phiquepal, 105, 114. 
Dawson, Richard Lew, 269. 
Dennis, Charles, 28. 
DePauw University, 68, 77. 
Dillon, John B., 231, 249. 
Dooley, A. H., 237. 
Dransfields, at New Harmony, 

132. 
Dreiser, Theodore, 281. 
Dufour, Mrs. A. L. Ruter, 248, 

251. 
Dumont, Mrs. Julia L., 89-94, 

247, 248. 
Duncan, Robert, 181. 
Dunn, Jacob P., 232. 
Dye, Miss Charity, 287. 
Dyer, Rev. Sidney, 250. 

Eads, James B., 12. 

Earlham College, 'jj. 

Eaton, Arthur Wentworth, 215. 

Edson, Helen Rockwood, 241. 

Egan, Maurice Francis, 215. 

Eggleston, Edward, 8, 17, 51, 79, 

89. 91. 133-155. 225, 280. 
Eggleston, George Cary, 134, 224. 
Eggleston, Guilford, 138. 
Eggleston, Joseph Gary, 134, 137, 

139. 



Eggleston, Miles, 138, 236. 
Ehrmann, Max, 284. 
Ellsworth, Henry W., 251. 
Emerson, R. W., 248, 263. 
English, William H., 235, 280. 
Episcopalians, early difficulties 

of, 65. 
Everett, Edward, 19. 

Fairbanks, Charles Warren, 280. 
Fauntleroys, at New Harmony, 

132. 
Feiba Peveli, m, 112, 122. 
Fellenberg, 102, 124. 
Field, Eugene, 172. 
Finley, John, 29, 34. 
Fishback, W. P., 242. 
Fiske, John, 8. 
Fletcher, Calvin. 83. 
Fletcher family, 18. 
Fletcher, Julia C, 216. 
Fletcher, Rev. J. C, 216. 
Flower, Richard, loi. 
Flowers in churches, 63. 
Fort Wayne, 13. 
Forsyth, William, 289. 
Foster, John W., 288. 
Foulke, William Dudley, 26, 229. 
Franklin College, 26, 'jj. 
Fretageot, Achilles, 105. 
Fretageot, Madame, 115, 132. 
Fuller, Hector, 242. 
Furman, Lucy S., 216. 

Gallatin, Albert, 71. 

Garland, Hamlin, 172. 

Gary, 276. 

Gillilan, S. W., 243. 

Gilmore, James R. (" Edmund 

Kirke ") , 257, 260, 263. 
Goode, Frances E., 155. 
Goodwin, Rev. T. A., 35. 
Gordon, Jonathan W„ 251. 
Gruelle, Richard B., 289. 



INDEX 



293 



(Hack), Elizabeth Miller, 283. 

Hadley, John V,, 53. 

Halford, E. W., 237. 

Hall, Bayard Rush, 73. 

Hanover College, tj. 

Harding, George C., 240, 267 
286. 

Harding, Samuel Bannister, 286 

Harney, VV. W., 250. 

Harper, Ida Husted, 241. 

Harris, Leo O., 157, 266, 

Harrison, Benjamin, 4, 243. 

Harrison, Christopher, 16. 

Harrison, W. H., 4, 67,71. 

Havens, Rev. James, 67. 

Hay, John, 16. 

Hayes, Lewis D., 237. 

Ha3'es, President, 190. 

Henderson, Rev. C. R., 241. 

Hendricks, Thomas A., 280. 

Hendricks, William, 76. 

Henodelphisterian Society, 75. 

Higginson, T. W., 157. 

Holland, J, G., 19. 

Holliday family, 18. 

Holliday, John H., 26, 237. 
Holliday, Rev. F. C, 65. 
Holman, Jesse L., 76. 
Holmes, O. W., 260, 263. 
" Hoosier Athens," 177. 
Hoosier dialect, 45-62, 152, 163, 

275- 
Hoosier Fiddle, 41, 
Hoosier " group," 274. 
Hoosier, origin of word, 29-36. 
" Hoosier Schoolmaster," 145. 
Hoosierdom, extent of, 151. 
Hoshour, Samuel K., 96, 181. 
House, Ben D., 265. 
Hovey, Edmund O., 80, 
Howard, Tilghman A., 35. 
Howe, Daniel Wait, 234, 
Howe, Will D., 286. 
Howells, W. D., 246. 



Howland, John D., 12. 
Howland, Livingston, 12. 
Howland, Louis, 26, 237. 
Hurty, John N., 278. 

"In My Youth," 284, 

Indiana : relation to national life, 
3-5 ; slavery in, 5 ; foreign and 
native element, 11 ; political 
preferences, 26; pioneers, 36, 
39 ; religious influences, 65-69 ; 
education in, 70, 277 ; illiteracy 
in, 81, 87; early poets, 245; 
landscape of, 36, 219, 269 ; fine 
arts, 288. 

Indiana University, 26, 73-76, 
277, 285. 

Indianapolis, 17-20. 

Indianapolis Literary Club, 19. 

Ingersoll, Robert G., 189. 

James, G. P. R., 181. 
Jennings, Governor, 22. 
Jewett, Milo Parker, 80. 
Johnson, Robert Underwood, 13. 
Johnston, Annie Fellows, 283. 
Jordan, David S., 78. 
Jordan, Mrs. D. M., 269. 
Judah, Mary Jameson, 221. 
Julian, George W., 226, 251. 
Julian, Isaac H,, 248, 251. 

Kern, John W., 280. 
Ketcham, W. A., 44. 
Keenan, Henry F., 215. 
Krout, Caroline V., 212. 
Krout, Mary H., 212. 

Lafayette, 14, 267. 
Landis, Frederick, 288. 
Lane, Henry S., 180. 
Lee, John, 202. 
Lehmanowski, Colonel, 32. 
Lesueur, Charles A., 104, 106. 



294 



INDEX 



Levering, Julia Henderson, 287. 
Lewis, Allen, 26. 
Lewis, Charles S., 26. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 38, 125, 152. 
Lockwood, George B., 287. 
Lodge, Harriet Newell, 241. 
Longfellow, H, W., 258, 263. 
Lowell, J. R., 160, 172, 263. 
Lynching, 43. 

Maclure, William, 104, 105, 115, 

129. 
McCulloch, Hugh, 14. 
McCutcheon, George Barr, 281. 
McCutcheon, John T., 242, 281. 
Macdonald, Donald, 105, 107. 
Macluria, iii, 112, 122. 
McDonald, Joseph E., 179. 
McGinnis, Gen. George F., 184, 
Madison, 11, 155. 
Major, Charles, 223. 
" Mark Twain," 164. 
Marshall, Thomas R., 280. 
Martindale, E. B., 160. 
Mason, A. L., 242. 
Matthews, Claude, 21. 
Matthews, G. C, 237. 
Matthews, James Newton, 215. 
Meredith, Solomon, 83. 
Merrill family, 18. 
Merrill, Miss Catharine, 94. 
Merrill, Samuel, 94. 
Militia, early, 39. 
Miller (Hack), Ehzabeth, 283. 
Miller, Joaquin, 215. 
Millerites, 148. 
Mills, Caleb, 79, 80, 85-88. 
Moody, Martha Livingstone, 241, 
Moody, WiUiam Vaughn, 281. 
Moores, Charles W., 286. 
Morris family, 18. 
Morrison, John L, 16. 
Morton, Oliver P., 22, 229. 
Morton, Oliver T., 26, 229. 



Mount, James A., 21. 
Murphy, Dr. Edward, 130. 

Nadal, E. S., 204, 216, 

Nadal, Rev. Bernard H., 216. 

Nashoba, 105. 

Neef, Joseph, 105, 106. 

Neef, Madame, 115. 

Nelson, Thomas H., 15. 

New Albany, 140, 143, 256, 257. 

258, 259. 
New Harmony, 21, 98-132, 287. 
New Harmony Disseminator, 128. 
New Harmony Gazette, iii, 118, 

128. 
Nicholas, Anna, 220, 237. 
Nichols, Rebecca S., 248, 250, 

252. 
Noble, Harriet, 241. 
North Carolina, influence of, in 

dialect, 52. 
Notre Dame University, t], 215. 

Oliphant, Laurence, 126. 
Owen, David Dale, 126. 
Owen, Richard, 127. 
Owen, Robert, 99, loi, 103, 104, 

no, 115, 121, 122, 123, 124, 131, 

287. 
Owen, Robert Dale, 24, 76, 104, 

III, 114, 124, 125. 
Owen, William, 104, 128. 

Paine, Dan L., 267. 

Parker, Benj. S., 56, 249, 254, 

265. 
Parker, Theodore, 19. 
Peabody, Rev. Ephraim, 248. 
Pestalozzi, 102, 107. 
Phillips, David Graham, 284. 
Piatt, John James, 215, 246, 256, 

258, 260. 
Pioneers, books of, 38. 
Poe, Edgar A., 261. 



INDEX 



295 



Poetry, characteristics of early 

Western, 244. 
" Poor Whites," 8, 44. 
Porter, Gene Stratton, 282. 
Posey, Thomas, 21. 
Prentice, George D., 246, 247, 

253- 

Protestantism, phases of, in Indi- 
ana, 64. 

Public Schools, 277. 

Purdue University, 277. 

Rabb, Kate Milner, 241. 

Ralston, Alexander, 17. 

Papp, George, 98-101. 

Rariden, James, 236. 

Rawles, William A., 285. 

Ray family, 18. 

Reed, Peter Fishe, 249. 

Reeves, Arthur M., 230. 

Reid, Whitelaw, 185. 

Richmond, 13. 

Ridpath, John Clark, 233. 

Riley, James Whitcomb, 27, 42, 

49. 57. 133. 156-176, 217. 
Riley, Reuben A., 157. 
Ross, Morris, 273. 

Salem, 16, 17. 

Say, Thomas, 104, 106, 115, 128. 

Scotch-Irish, 7, 51, 65. 

Sharpe family, 18. 

Smith, Elizabeth Conwell (WiU- 

son), 257. 
Smith, O. H., 31, 83, 236. 
Smith, Roswell, 14. 
Sorin, Father, 64. 
Stark, Otto, 289. 
Steele, Theodore C, 288. 
Stein, Evaleen, 267, 270. 
Sternpel, Guido H., 275. 
Stempel, Myrtle Emmert, 276. 
Stevenson, R. D., 243. 
Stoddard, Charles Warren, 215. 



Sulgrove, Berry, 15, 49, 181, 237. 
Sullivan, Jeremiah, 17. 
Swift, Lucius B., 26. 

Taggart, Lucy, 289. 
Tarkington, Booth, 217-221, 282. 
Tarkington, John Stevenson, 282. 
Taylor, Bayard, 19. 
Taylor, Dr. H. W., 40, 58. 
Teal, Angelina, 241. 
Terre Haute, 14, 215. 
Terrell, Rev. William, 140. 
Test, John, 180, 236. 
Thomas, Edith M., 159. 
Thompson, Maurice, 27, 199-211, 

270, 283. 
Thompson, Richard W., 14, 76, 

83. 
Thompson, Will H., 202, 211. 
Thurston, Laura M., 252. 
Todd, M. Genevieve, 268. 
Troost, Gerard, 105, 106, 115. 
Tuttle, Joseph F., 80. 

Unitarians, in Ohio valley, 248. 
Upfold, Bishop, 63. 

Van Devanter, Willis, 280. 
Venable, W. H., 249. 
Very, Jonas, 248. 
Vevay, 89, 134. 
Vickroy, Louise E., 249. 
Vincennes, 5, 11. 
Vincennes University, 72. 
Voorhees, Daniel W., 15. 

Wabash College, 77, 80, 88, 178, 

211. 
W^allace, David, 22, 76, 180, 236. 
Wallace, General Lew, 22, 56, 

180-199, 261. 
Wallace, Mrs. Lew, 198. 
Wallace, William Ross, 250. 
Warren, Josiah, 129. 



296 



INDEX 



Wason, Robert Alexander, 284. 
Weik, Jesse William, 286. 
Wheatcrofts, at New Harmony, 

132. 
Whitcomb, Governor, 22, 
White caps, 43. 
rVhitwell, Stedman, 105. 
vVickersham, James A., 222. 
Willard, Governor, 22. 
Williams, Charles R., 237, 242. 
Williams, Henry M., 26. , 
Williams, James D., 20. 
Williams, Jesse Lynch, 14. 
WiUiams,"w. R.,269. 



Willson, Forceythe, 256-264. 
Wilson, W. L., 243. 
Wilstach, J. A., 241. 
Wirt, William A., 277. 
Woodburn, James Albert, 285. 
Woodlands, influence of, on 

pioneers, 36. 
Woods, Rev. Aaron, 33. 
Woollen, William Wesley, 236. 
Wright, Frances (D'Arusmont), 

105, 124. 
Wright, Joseph A., 22, 31. 

Yandes family, 18. 



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